A Gun and a World Full of Troubles
by Veymorak
Summary: An amnesiac tactician, a mysterious soldier with knowledge of the future, and the captain of the Shepherds himself. How do these three tie together into a bigger picture? What are Project Naga and Grima? The bonds between these strange soldiers will either strengthen and banish the darkness, or unravel with the rest of the world. Postmodern/Cyberpunk AU
1. Chapter 1

" _No!"_

 _He tried to stop the bleeding, but magical wounds weren't so easily fixed. Already, the light was fading from his cerulean blue eyes and the captain's grip on his coat sleeve had begun to loosen._

" _It's-" He coughed, a wet sound punctuated by a splatter of blood that misted his coat and harness. "-It's not your fault…"_

" _No no no-" He choked, casting a glance behind him in hopes to see a medic approaching, "don't die! Please!"_

" _Promise me…" The captain whispered, lifting his head from the white tiles of the floor. "You'll escape this place. Don't let it…"_

 _His eyes widened as he trailed off with a breath._

 _ **This was always going to happen. We both knew it.**_

" _What?!" He shot up from the side of the downed captain, eyes darting to and fro in an attempt to find the speaker._

 _ **You couldn't hide forever. You and I think too much alike.**_

" _You and I are nothing alike!" He shouted desperately, cocking his pistol and allowing lightning to dance across his fingers and light the dark room. "I won't let you hurt anyone else! Do you hear me? It ends here!"_

 _ **Oh?**_

 _The man froze in place as a loud thump of… something, against glass echoed through the room. His blood ran cold as a dark chuckle reverberated off of the unseen walls._

 _Slowly, he turned to face the noise, and was horrified at what he found._

" _This is what you really are…?" He wondered._

 _A few feet away from him, a giant glass cylinder reflected his own calm face. Warnings and symbols had been slapped across the face of the tube in the form of stickers, but still he couldn't help but feel…_ _ **drawn**_ _to it._

 _Suddenly, a shape slammed into the glass from within, exploding from the shadows._

 _ **Welcome home, Robin.**_

 **I**

" **D** on't you just love the wilderness, Lissa?"

" _Oh_ , yeah! Of course I do! What's not to love?! Besides the million bugs trying to eat me alive, and the walking, and the camping and-"

"-That's enough out of you." Chrom laughed as his younger sister fumed. "Besides, you wanted to be a field medic. If you can't camp, then you won't get far."

Lissa didn't seem to have a response for that; instead folding her arms and pouting. It was about as menacing as a growling puppy, except this was much less subjective, and even one with a phobia of small, pig-tailed girls would laugh at the image.

"South Town is actually just north of here." Their bodyguard, Frederick, commented with a raised brow. "Back in the Shepherds' prime, we would leave new recruits to find their way back to civilization."

"No. No we did not." Chrom hastily corrected, fiddling with the zipper of his single-sleeved coat. "And if we did, the return rate wa- would be extremely high, averaging over sixty percent in survivors."

"I heard a 'was'." Lissa said, sounding small.

"'Point is: hiking is a preferable alternative." The Captain concluded, sounding only slightly uneasy.

"And builds character!" Frederick added helpfully, adjusting the overly large backpack that was slung over his shoulder like it weighed nothing. However, both knew that couldn't be the case - as both Lissa's thick sleeping bag and the guardian's own were tied to the bottom and top of the bag. The bag that, by the way, was carrying most of their supplies. "One day, you'll be carrying a bag like this."

"I'll _die!"_

Both men laughed at this, but the royal's expression remained indignant and, frankly, horrified.

"Guys!"

"Relax, Lissa." Chrom reassured her, still chuckling. "We're only joking."

"Indeed." Frederick nodded. "Try as I may, I won't be around forever. Eventually, it will be _Chrom_ carrying this bag!"

"I'll be-?! Now hold on just a-"

Now it was Lissa's turn to laugh as her older brother tripped over his own words, giving a stuttered cry of protest.

This wasn't their first venture into the wilderness. No; far from it in fact. It had become a monthly ritual, beginning when the captain was a mere six years old. And as much as she disliked the whole camping aspect of the quest, she still enjoyed spending time with the other two.

"It's such a perfect da-" She began to sing as she skipped, only to trip over a pebble and fall flat on her face.

She let out a moan as she picked her face out of the dirt path, and gave a cough as the dust cloud she had kicked up when she had fallen engulfed her.

"No one gonna help me up?" She inquired, rubbing her bruised cheek. "Okay. I didn't need a hand anyways."

But her words fell on deaf ears. She shot a confused look at first her brother, and second her guardian. Neither paid her any mind, and both had their eyes cast upward through the trees ahead.

"... Guys?" She said, feeling slightly worried. After receiving no response, she decided to stand beside the statue-like men and imitate their stare.

It quickly became real as she realized the subject of interest.

"Oh…"

Smoke.

Thick black smoke poured from over the treetops in droves, tinting the sky.

 **I**

 **H** e was really not all that sure what was going on.

Who was he, you might ask? Well, to be honest, even he didn't know. Crouched down behind a table, his steaming cup of coffee - a special brew of imported rare Valmese beans, " _Good for the mind, good for the body, good for the soul!"_ (As the paper cup proudly proclaimed) - still held tight in one gloved pale hand, he was absolutely unsure as to what in the seven hells was happening.

He grimaced as what he was fairly certain to be bullets screamed over his head, upsetting the snow white mess that sat on top of it. Why were there bullets flying over his head, threatening to cause bodily harm to him and his hair?

The lack of answers to these obscure questions was beginning to annoy him.

Casting a glance to his left, he was surprised to find a young woman in a vest and bowtie hiding next to him. Her eyes were wild, and she seemed to literally be shaking with fright.

"Oh-" He found his voice to be rather calm, as though bullets flying every which way was as common an occurrence in his life as bumping into someone was in another's. "My apologies. I didn't see you there… I don't think we've met. Are you alright?"

"I'm Anna." She replied evenly, sounding calmer than she appeared as she shakily brushed a lock of red hair aside. "I'm a waitress, for Naga's sake! Why can't trouble find one of my sisters instead?!"

"Fascinating." He hurried the conversation along as a man behind her, who had seemingly been attempting to sprint to safety, collapsed mid-run as his expensive-looking white shirt was shredded like cheese. Or perhaps looked like cheese? It mattered not. "You wouldn't happen to be able to tell me where I am, would you?"

She gave him a confused look. "Cafe Conqueror©, the Lord of Culinary Domination. Did you even read the sign…?"

He hesitated.

Was he literate? And if so, _had_ he read the sign?

"Perhaps a bit less specific?" He tried again, fiddling with the gold tassel of his own expensive-looking jacket. "You know - a more general area?"

"SouthTown Resort, The Greatest-"

" _Even more general, Anna!"_ He exclaimed urgently as bits of glass and food exploded from the table above in a rain of Croissant and China. "Wait, why's there a resort in a town?"

" _The town was here first, but the location was beautiful!"_ She squealed, shielding herself from the delicious downpour. _"I just work here!"_

Giving a grunt of resignation, he turned away from her, instead facing the wall lined with abandoned tables and chairs. His eye for detail quickly took in the various awards on proud display, proudly bragging of quality service and friendly staff. He couldn't help but quirk a brow, however, as a stray shot tore the Safest Working Environment of 2087 Award straight off of it's hook, where it shattered on the tiled floor below in a spray of glass shards.

He was under the impression that it was ultimately for the best, all things considered.

As the gunfire halted for a brief moment, he allowed himself to peek around the corner of the mossy brick support that held up the table.

He frowned.

What was presumably once a large display window that overlooked a shimmering blue pool, complete with pool chairs and a bar, had now been reduced to an enormous and extremely unsafe entryway. The doorframe set into said ex-window was now lacking doors, sadly leaving it a mere frame. Remnants of both were scattered across the floor of the front of the cafe in a mosaic of glass and twisted metals.

He assumed that he must be very well off to afford dining in such a place. That, or he was a very fast runner and lacked a moral obligation to pay for his food.

He hoped it was the former.

Standing with a large boot braced on the window frame, a man clad in black and grey was jamming a magazine into a sleek looking rifle. He likely looked like a common schmuck under the helmet and balaclava combination that masked his face, as well as the shiny black goggles that concealed his eyes.

Suddenly, the man's head was angled towards his own, and a brief moment of recognition seemed to make the soldier's stance shift ever-so-slightly.

" _He's here!"_ The schmuck shouted over his shoulder in a rough voice, tinged by a distinct accent. _"Get the hell over here!"_

Our expensive-coated protagonist barely had a second to contemplate whether or not the schmuck knew who he was before a burst of gunfire drove him back into cover, shielding his face as a series of stone chips pelted at his sleeve.

"I believe we've been made," He observed, swallowing heavily as his presumably brilliant mind raced for a solution to the problem that he was now faced with.

"We're so dead…" Anna mumbled to herself, ignoring him as she rocked back and forth. "Make a fortune… make a fortune… make a-"

"Hey." He snapped his fingers, forcing himself to remain calm. "If you want to live, then you are going to concentrate on something aside from our theoretically impending doom."

She shot him a glance. "You're the one with the tome. I'm just a-"

"-Tome?" He cut off the redhead, not caring to hear what she considered herself to be. "... As in a book? I don't see-"

He didn't get to finish as a barrage of gunfire shrieked overhead, thumping cracking and crashing into the various bits of nondescript scenery that was behind him.

" _A T.O.M.E!"_ She repeated, ducking her head beneath her hands and likely preparing to die horribly. " _Technical Operative's Mystical Enhancer!"_

He tilted his head as she pointed to him.

Following the finger's path, he eventually found himself looking at the peculiar device strapped to his wrist.

Measuring at about a half a foot long, an almost bulky device of varying metals was held firmly in place over his forearm's sleeve by a series of leather straps.

How hadn't he noticed it before? And why was he still holding the paper cup of Valmese coffee? Did he truly like it _that_ much?

More questions. Not what he asked for, but unfortunately what he received.

Reaching a finger hesitantly towards the dark glass screen that was set into the device, he almost jumped as it flickered to life at his touch.

"You _do_ know magic, right?"

He did not appreciate the doubt in her tone, but supposed it was justified as more gunfire and callouts filled the cafe.

"Yeah. Sure." He tapped at the screen mechanically, almost as if he had done it a thousand times before.

"Why not?"

 **I**

" _I've got him pinned!"_

" _Don't kill him! We need that bastard ALIVE!"_

" _GO GO GO!"_

The schmuck hurried towards the decorative stone table as bullets flew past him, chipping at the brickwork and likely scaring the living shit out of anyone hiding behind it. And if they had half a brain between them, they were right to be scared. Bullets hurt. As a schmuck, he would know. He gets shot at almost every day. Just part of the job.

He hoisted his rifle with one hand, pointing it unsteadily in the direction of the table while pointing the streamlined silver dart gun just where the silver-haired man had last poked his head out.

Only one person was supposed to be taken alive, and in a moment they would be passed out on the floor with a sleek dart protruding from their person.

At least; he thought that's how it worked. As a schmuck, he didn't have the liberty of knowing how his equipment worked...

As he rounded the corner though, he was met with a peculiar sight.

Clad in a black and purple jacket, his target was fearlessly glaring up at him from his position behind the table. Much to the schmuck's confusion, one half-gloved hand was firmly wrapped around a steaming hot cup of Valmese coffee, evidently a special brew of rare imported Valmese beans. The other; palm flat and fingers stretched out in a motion mimicking that of a spellcast.

However, as he raised the dart gun to shoot the man, he couldn't help but scoff. The snow-haired man couldn't know how to use magic, because…

His finger hesitated, resting on the trigger but not pulling it back as yellow bolts of lightning danced across the man's splayed fingers.

Much to his horror, he could not think of a single good reason as to why the lightning-handed man couldn't use magic. In fact, the only thing he could think of was how much the man looked like he knew magic.

Suddenly, it all clicked into place as a short jet of steam exploded from the vents of the TOME fixed to the man's arm and the ominous crackle of thunder became even louder.

The man, who the presumptuous schmuck had assumed to lack any defensive capabilities including magic, did in fact know how to use magic. Likely offensive magic, if the scary lightning was anything to go off of.

As his finger raced to pull the trigger faster than lightning strikes, he realized the counterintuitivity of the task.

Yes.

The coffee-wielding man did indeed know how to use magic.

"...Well how 'bout that." He managed to croak before he began to regret all of his choices up to this final point.

 **I**

There was a quiet hiss followed by a series of clicks as the TOME shifted slightly, several plates sliding in various directions and exposing numerous ports that he assumed to be vents for exhaust to be expelled through. The sound of gunfire had seemingly temporarily halted as the schmuck flew backwards with a scream, his rifle going off and spraying bullets off to the right and out of sight as he slammed into one of the few chairs in the room still standing, toppling it and crashing into the vandalized display wall while the silver tranquilizer gun went skidding across the tile.

"... Interesting." He mused at last, flexing his left hand fingers as remnants of a spark danced through them. "But slightly exhausting."

" _Slightly?!"_ Anna squeaked from behind him, eyes likely wide as saucers. "You sent him flying with a Thunder spell!"

"And that is unusual?"

"Very!"

He cocked his head to look at her, and frowned at what he saw. He wasn't sure what kind of person he was, but it seemed that he had an eye for detail. Something in her eyes…

"You don't trust me." He observed, causing her face to flush.

"N-No! It's just-... who are you?"

"Why has that become important?" He wondered, knowing exactly why. Something about his newfound skill set had made him… different. Dangerous, perhaps.

"I've had my suspicions since you walked through the door with your fancy device, and now you're using military-grade equipment, fighting off gunmen that want to capture you, and haven't even given your name?" He couldn't help but be impressed. It seemed that the waitress was more astute than she let on.

But she was asking the hard questions - the ones he hated not having answers to. Who was he? Who was he indeed.

"I-"

" _Open fire!"_

Suddenly, the cafe once again exploded into gunfire, so loud it was almost deafening. On instinct, he ducked his head lower and forced her to do the same with his free hand, just as another rain of bullets ripped through the stone table and caused several geometric chunks of mossy rock to break free and drop down onto the two.

"What the _hell?!"_ Anna screamed into his ear as a block of mineral bounced off of his head.

"They're trying to make us panic!" He replied, struggling to be heard over the sound of rock shattering and bullets ricocheting. "Stay down!"

"I'm sure as hell not standing up!"

He supposed it went unsaid as to why this was a sound strategy. He didn't want to end up like expensive-looking shirt man, nor the plot of Sealed Shield Destiny: Concealed Honesty - that is to say; full of holes.

"We need to leave." He said, causing her to remove her head from her arms and roll her eyes at him.

"You sure know what you're doing."

"If they all come at once, they can wipe us out in one fell swoop. We must formulate a plan, or we die with our tails between our legs!"

"Can we go back to the part where we leave? I liked that one."

"As did I, but that's the reward for planning." He said idly, his mind already elsewhere. A small cafe, located on presumably the bottom floor of a fancy resort. Gunmen trying to shoot him with shiny metal darts were present, and they had guns that shot more than shiny silver darts.

No law enforcement would be present immediately, and if these schmucks were schmucks worth their salt they were likely aware that they couldn't keep shooting forever. Eventually some form of authority would arrive, and then it would be off to the bad people cage for them - assuming they didn't simply get shot on sight.

This meant that his goal wasn't to route the enemy - not this time.

He frowned. It was becoming increasingly likely that he had done this before.

"We have to fall back and wait for the police," He finally affirmed, satisfied to an extent with the plan. "Eventually they will be forced to retreat or engage a higher threat."

"But-" She let out another squeak as she was pelted with stone from the lead-ravaged table. "-how do we get out of _this?!"_

He was working on it.

Suddenly, the gleam of metal caught his eye, and for a moment he mistook it for silverware. After all, forks knives and spoons were scattered across the entirety of the establishment - launched here and there by the schmucks' shoddy aim.

However, for reasons he couldn't quite place his finger on, he turned his gaze on the object.

There, lying just beside the ruined stone slab of a table, a familiar silver weapon remained where it had fallen, gleaming a brilliant flame color as it reflected the flashes of muzzles.

Familiar…

He pursed his lips.

He had seen a weapon like it. But where?

Shaking out of his daze, his hand darted out with less grace than he would like, and soon he was holding the surprisingly hefty silver dart gun firmly between his hands.

Fascinated, he turned the weapon carefully in his hands, testing the grip with a flex of his fingers. It was familiar alright.

"A dart gun?" Anna said incredulously, eyeing the piece with less fascination and more disappointment. "Really? They have guns! Real guns! What are you going to do; dart them to death?"

"I could put them to sleep forever,"

"Now isn't the time for jokes." She said seriously, her eyes still filled with fear. "If you go out there with that, they will shoot you and you will die."

He stared at her for a second, before snorting.

"Just because I'm an amnesiac doesn't mean I'm stupid," He began to lean out of cover, pointing the silver pistol-shaped gun around the corner, but not exposing anything save for his wrist and an eye.

"Wait, you have _amnesia?! Oh gods we're going to-"_

 _Older model, exactly as I don't remember it._ He mused satirically, flicking the small safety-like switch, before flipping the second safety off. Unlike before, it was now unlocked. He hadn't needed to check before to know it had been, but he knew what each switch did as he fingered the trigger.

 _Wait…_

"Are you even listening to me?!" Anna still clamoured in his ear over the crack of weaponfire, clearly growing more and more agitated. "Typical! So typical! No one listens to the tutori-"

 _Am I even a good shot?_

"-It was the same thing with that blue-haired-"

 _I hope so… if not, this will not be pleasant._

"-And then that annoying redhea-"

 _Now!_

A sound even louder than the previously described rifles tore through the Conquerer Café, and he would have been smacked in the face by the kick if he hadn't anticipated it. The sound of wood splintering drowned out the echo, and he didn't hesitate as he steadied the gun before firing three more shots down to the front of the establishment.

There were shouts of surprise and screams of pain as a schmuck went down, toppling backwards as a spray of crimson decked his comrade.

Almost instantly the sounds of rifles stopped as men scrambled backwards, scampering over one another in an attempt to get to cover from the prey-turned-predator. Not letting up, he unleashed several more blasts as he climbed to his feet steadily, noting Anna following suite with a stunned look.

"Come on!" He ordered over the noise, backing away from the table he had been taking cover behind for a good five minutes now. Yes. He had decided that he was sick of that table. "Lead me to the back exit!"

"R-Right!" She stuttered, turning and gently placing a hand on his shoulder. "Please follow me in a calm and orderl-"

 _She's way too into her job._ He sighed to himself, almost saying it aloud.

 **O**

"Gunfire, definitely!" Chrom yelled over the pulsing roar of the propulsion systems. "I don't know what the hell is going on down there, but we're the closest government officials to the AO! Fortunately, I think we're more than prepared to deal with a few gunmen!"

" _What about local law enforcement?"_ Sumia asked over the radio.

"We've lost contact with them! This town is more of a village than anything. There weren't many police officers here, and if I let the satirist in me guess I'd say there are even less now."

Frederick gave a grunt as he strapped his armor on over his vest, each buckle clicking quietly and heard only by the guardian. "Very well. Then I suppose you and I will be investigating alongside Sumia-"

"What about _me?!_ " Lissa shouted over the loud noise. "I can help!"

"Negative!" Chrom shouted back, not hesitating as he pulled on his own vest. "I don't know what we're walking into, and I'd rather not explain to Emm why I dragged you into a firefight and got you shot!"

"All the more reason to bring a medic." She replied, reaching over and snatching his sword from where he had set it on the steel box of equipment. "You're not going without me!"

" _You need a pilot, Captain."_ Sumia chimed in through the headset he had put on. _"I can't fly from down here."_

"We need to get down there now!" Lissa continued, pointing down the side of the large hill towards the small village set at the bottom of the slope. Chrom frowned at their ganging up on him. "If we don't hurry, someone could die!"

He cursed, before flipping the box back open and plunging a hand inside. Now was no time for indecision. After a moment, he drew a tan vest reinforced with green carbon plates from within and tossed it at her. The girl was forced to drop the sword to catch it, and grinned like a fool as she did it.

Hooked into the collar, her name was written in permanent marker on a white tag.

"Never can be too prepared." He grunted dejectedly in explanation as he hoisted a rifle out of the crate. "Just keep to the rear, and watch out for me and Frederick with your… healing stuff."

She rolled her eyes.

Meanwhile, Chrom slammed the glass and steel lid of the locker shut and watched as it slid back into the starboard of the PEGASUS, before jamming his magazine into the gun and leaning over to retrieve his sword. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Frederick placing his collapsed Lance in the holster on his thigh with one hand as he secured his rifle strap with the other.

Soon enough, the large metal aircraft took off once more as it's wings twisted and the ports glowed a stunning blue, before it rose into the no-longer-sunny sky with a final roar.

He grimaced as he flipped down his glasses, a blue grid lighting up for a second before various bits of information listed themselves in the corners of his vision.

Already, rain had begun to speckle the smooth glass and microtechnology.

It could only go down hill from here.

 **O**

 **I've had this idea floating around for far too long. Since last year, actually. I'm not sure if anyone will even like it, as it's rather… different from an ordinary FE Fic.**

 **I'll probably toy with this, so don't expect consistent updates. Just needed to vent this idea. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if this wasn't updated until I'm finished the other billion stories I've started. Or… at least the two.**

 **Basically, Fire Emblem in a postmodern world. Not super futuristic, but more like Destiny and BO3. Also with swords. And magic.**

 **Yeah. I did my best to incorporate the best of FE. I'm not sure how well I did though. If you want to see more, then drop a review I guess. I always seek self betterment.**


	2. Chapter 2

**Mission 02**

 **Meet and Greet**

 **F** rederick was well acquainted with trouble; Frederick and Emmeryn had all but raised Lissa and Chrom, so that much was to be expected. While Lissa's pranks had always gone according to plan when she pulled them on Chrom, Frederick knew that he had always been an easy target. As much as it pained him to say it, the boy had more heart than he did head.

But pranks and Frederick? They didn't mix like that. Frederick could smell trouble from a mile away, and was always quick to defuse her tricks when he so much as came within a kilometre of them.

Maybe it was perspiration dripping from over a door frame, or a quiet ruffling coming from under his blankets; he would then catch the bucket of cold water, or gracefully return the frog to Lissa's room – though perhaps not exactly where she usually kept them in the tank on her dresser.

It was because of this that he yanked Chrom backwards, away from the window as a weighty looking metal stool crashed through it, followed by a tumbling red-headed waitress and a snow-haired man about Chrom's age, who landed in a somewhat more practiced crouch.

With both the speed and precision that one would only find in a trained veteran, Frederick lunged forwards and kicked the silvery weapon out of the man's hand before whipping his heel back around and smashing it into his other hand, flooring the new arrival through brute strength and cunning speed.

" _Frederick?!"_ Chrom half snapped and half demanded as he stumbled backwards, Lissa ducking behind her older brother while the bodyguard trained his rifle on his victim.

You see, Frederick smelled trouble alright – and this young man reeked of it.

"We are outside," the man on the ground noted, seemingly unsurprised by his sudden detainment. "All according to plan."

"I think my bruises have bruises," the redhead complained in response, not moving to get up. Frederick quickly scanned her with his eyes first, and then the goggles that protected them.

"Identify yourself!" he ordered, directing his attention back towards the man that was now sitting up. "Stay where you are!"

"Frederick, chill," Chrom said, getting back to his feet and strolling over to the waitress. The girl looked up at him without fully unburying her face from the ground, whimpered, and then returned to her safe place. "Are you alright?" he asked her, offering a hand. "We're not going to hurt you."

When she didn't move, he smiled as kindly as he knew how. Emmeryn was much better at comforting people, but he was her brother; he had to have gotten a little bit of that.

"There are better places to take a nap than on the ground, you know," he tried again, earning a snicker from Lissa.

"Are you with the local police?" the man on the ground by the window asked, looking to Chrom instead of his attacker. There were scratches peeking out through the tears in his sleeves, but they didn't look too bad – Lissa could fix him up in no time, so long as he was steered away from Frederick as soon as possible. "There's been a murder."

"You're telling me," Chrom mumbled, recalling the reports of gunfire. "Are you okay?"

"How about we see if we care first?" Frederick said, giving a jerk of his rifle and motioning for the pair to get to their feet. Chrom could see the talkative one's eyes lingering on the magazine for a moment, traveling along the barrel as if he were familiar with the weapon. Judging by his stance, he guessed the man to be some form of ex-military.

Whatever he was, Chrom was certain that he was no civilian. And _that_ was probably why Frederick had been set off like a bear trap.

"I don't mean to come off as rude," he began, raising a finger and causing Frederick's own to twitch ever so slightly. Chrom sighed. "But that weapon has more than enough power to punch a hole through all four of us if we were to line up neatly."

"And your point?" Chom inquired.

"I was just wondering if perhaps he was compensating for something."

"I like this banter – I really do," the redhead said, piping up as she rolled onto her back. She looked nervous, but not because of Frederick; her eyes lingered on the window that they had come through, wary. "But I don't want to die. Can we move this along? I'm Ana, nice to meet you."

Frederick didn't respond to her jab, gun still trained on the rising man. He was built lean, standing almost at Chrom's height, but he radiated a different sort of aura: where Chrom was bold and commanding, he gave off a calculating and controlling air.

All the same, the captain couldn't help but feel that even with his unique presence, allowing him to be shot by Frederick was unethical.

"Stand down, Frederick," Chrom said, a cutting edge to his voice that he reserved for such situations. "If he tries anything, we'll get him before he gets us. Now let's take care of this with some civility, okay?"

There was a beat, and for a moment he thought the grizzled bodyguard would actually disobey his commanding officer. But only for a moment, as soon after there was a quiet shuffle as he scooted backwards, his weapon's business end dipping ever so slightly.

Chrom truly appreciated that, as he would be the first to admit that Frederick could mop the floor with him in CQC. He was strong _and_ fast; the only time Chrom ever won was when Frederick threw the match for the sake of his dignity – though all that ever had done was demoralize him.

"Thank you," the man in the black and purple jacket said. His hair was disheveled, and as he spoke he kept brushing a silver lock out of his face, only for it to drop back down in front of his eyes. Throughout the entire conversation, he would continue this neurotic and repetitive action: "I am serious, however. There are armed mercenaries lurking inside of the building, searching for something perhaps. Or maybe they're just killing for fun? Either way, as we speak they are sweeping the premises."

"How many?" Chrom asked, deciding to keep his questions and answers short and curt for now. He still wasn't sure if this man could be trusted, but he refused to treat him like an animal. "Do you know?"

"I stole this weapon from one of them after incapacitating him," he explained, gesturing to the silver firearm that Lissa had retrieved from beside the pool. "But there are still many more. A dozen at the least."

With a sigh, Chrom placed a hand to his headset, more out of habit than anything else. He had no idea what he had gotten himself into this time around, but he was getting the idea that it wasn't as simple as a bunch of murderers.

Frederick and Lissa's voices had been muted due to proximity and various other calculations that only Miriel really understood, but he could still hear the faint hum of the PEGASUS's propulsion systems coming through Sumia's headset as she flew. She had likely heard the entire thing.

"Sumia?"

" _I heard captain,"_ she said with a nod that he could practically hear. She was one of the best pilots in Ylisse, and definitely the best in the Shepherds. She hadn't gotten the chance to flex her flying muscles much as of late – to be completely frank, the Shepherds hadn't dealt with something as big as this in a long time – possible never, Chrom amended. " _Do want me to hover over the resort and keep an eye out?"_

Chrom thought about it for a moment before shaking his head. It took another second or two to realize she couldn't hear his own gesture, and he hastily said: "No. Can you try and get in contact with the local PD again? If they're really down for the count, I need Miriel to get Sully and Virion enroute."

" _They're already on their way. Sully didn't like waiting around, and Virion wanted to follow. Cordelia volunteered to pilot them with the Exalt's go-ahead."_

"ETA?"

" _Hours."_

"Son of a-" Chrom bit his lip, cutting the curse off and shaking his head. They couldn't wait that long – no telling how many were already dead due to their inaction during preparations. If they waited longer, any survivors that may exist would either bleed out or be shot on sight. "We're gonna have to go in without them then. We can handle a couple of mercs."

The man in the expensive looking coat frowned, realizing no one had really gotten around to telling him anything. He didn't even know where South Town _was,_ let alone why there were a bunch of terrorists about to engage in combat against some random protein-guzzling marine and his merry band of Die-Hard fans.

But as the man with the blue hair turned to face him again, he suddenly realized that attention wasn't always a good thing. The brunette with the way-to-big rifle was looking at him like he was already on death row, and for all he knew he might be. The men and women surrounding him and Anna could very well be psychologically unstable. They most certainly didn't look like any police he had ever seen, and the rifle pointed at him was making him really regret not remembering getting out of bed that morning.

"Listen to me," the bluette said, shrugging his shoulders as his conversation over the com line evidently finished itself. Our expensive coated protagonist had stopped paying attention to it at some point, and was now left wondering if he really was about to be shot by a man with a shoulder-born tramp-stamp and one sleeve. "My name is Chrom, and this is Frederick and Lissa. We're going to get you out of here – just wait here and our pilot's gonna come down and pick you two up, alright?"

The amnesiac blinked at this new information, guessing that what was done with him had never been his choice – he didn't get any say in it, apparently. Though he would admit it was better than being shot…

"If you have any family you wish to contact, you'll have to wait until we've asked you some questions first. Afterwards, you'll be returned home safely," Chrom finished, looking between the two expectantly. "Any questions?"

"What country are we in?" the snow-haired magician asked without hesitation, raising a hand eagerly over his head and mock-bouncing on the balls of his heels to further emphasize his point. "I would very much like someone to tell me this little detail as soon as possible."

Chrom and Frederick exchanged a glance, one face unsure and the other almost amused in a sadistic way. It seemed like an acceptable question at the time, but he was now realizing that it was also a very unusual one.

And then Frederick snorted.

"If he's a spy, he's not too bright sir," the bodyguard's unamused expression returned in an instant as he looked down on the jacketed man that he simply towered over. "We'd be fools to-"

"What's your name?" Chrom cut the larger man off, peering curiously at our unwitting protagonist.

While he might not have been wielding it threateningly, his rifle still demanded an answer, and so the amnesiac was put on the spot in an instant. He had never really stopped to consider the question – or perhaps he had and simply forgot about it. Either way, he was left in a bad and dare he say embarrassing position.

"My name?" He froze on the spot, his eyebrows furrowing and the corners of his lips turning downwards. If one were to peer into his umber orbs, they would find that no one was home – instead, he was lost in his thoughts, alone. The reference filled him with annoyance. "I… I don't seem to… What country are we in, Chrom?" he repeated, unconsciously trying to duck the question.

"We are in the Halidom of Ylisse, namely South Town." Chrom looked at him with such focus that it was beginning to make him feel uncomfortable. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see that Lissa had perked up at the sudden revelation of his ignorance. "Do you not remember your own name?"

"R-Robin," he suddenly said, the realization striking like lightning and causing his eyes to light up. He didn't even care if it was unusual to be so proud to remember one's own name – he could finally refer to himself as something shorter than Incredibly Adept Magician Tactician. "My name! It's Robin. I…" he sighed. "How strange. I just remembered that."

"Do you think we're all idiots?" Frederick said, breaking into the conversation with a deadpan expression of disbelief. He didn't seem as convinced of his condition as Chrom and Lissa were, Robin noted, as he still looked like he wanted to shoot him. "You expect us to believe you just _happened_ to _acquire_ amnesia in a _coffee_ _shop_?"

Robin winced. When it was put that way, it sounded simply awful. He liked the way he thought of it better. He was a _victim_ here. From what he knew, the human mind was incredibly complex – was it so unbelievable that the sweet taste of exotic coffee could break him?

"How strange. I don't even remember where I set my coffee," he realized, wondering how deep this amnesia deal went.

"This man is a joke," Frederick said simply with disgust, turning and snatching the gun from Lissa before retreating to the shade of the wall, where he crossed his arms and skulked like a shadow.

Robin shook his head, shooting a confused look to Chrom. Had this been the wrong time for a joke? Was he even joking when he really _couldn't_ remember where he had set his coffee?

"Sorry about that," Chrom apologized sheepishly, running his hands through his uniquely colored hair. He didn't seem like the type to get embarrassed over much, so Robin assumed it was more of an apology on Frederick's behalf than anything. "Frederick's not really the joking type. Sometimes I think he's so cautious he goes to the bathroom with a knife in the waistband of his shorts."

Robin forced himself not to point out that if it was in the waistband of his shorts, it would fall out upon trying to use the bathroom. He didn't need enemies at the moment. "Caution never killed anybody," he admitted instead, shrugging and doing his best to make a better impression. "This might not be the time for jokes anyways."

Suddenly, there was a loud roaring sound, and Robin cursed his lapse in observation. Above, a large aircraft was coming down to hover over the pool, sending waves across the tinted water.

"Looks like your carriage has arrived," Chrom joked, patting Robin on the back a little too hard. Robin somewhat resented this, but decided a grudge over such a trivial thing was not something a normal person would hold. "Once you're on board, you'll be detained and searched for weapons. Afterwards, you'll be flown to the capital of Ylisse for questioning."

"Is such a thing normal in this country?" he asked, unsure of the conditions. It made perfect sense of course, but at the same time sounded a bit too good to be true. Would it not make more sense to, if not shoot them, cuff them and have them escorted aboard, and then interrogated?

"It's the best we can do for you," Chrom replied, shrugging. "Once you're in Ylisse, you'll also receive complementary medical care, if that's any consolation."

It wasn't, but before he could say that it was so he found himself left alone as Chrom turned and simply walked off. He watched as Lissa tagged along behind him, following obediently. The way she carried herself suggested she was no soldier, and it left him to contemplate her place in Chrom's little task force.

The medical cross patch on her shoulder obviously told that she was some sort of medic or healer, but he didn't quite understand why what appeared to be a fourteen or fifteen year old girl was on the field of battle.

Either way, he spun as a plate on the hull of the dropship lowered into a slope, revealing a woman with light brown hair and a comforting smile. The smile dropped, however, when she looked around, scanning from left to right until her eyes finally settled on Robin and Anna.

"Oh no," she said softly, looking disappointed, as if she had been expecting someone else. "Did I miss the captain?"

 **O**

 **I** f Chrom had thought he was dealing with a bunch o' jokers, he was sorely mistaken. This became increasingly evident as he found himself pinned down only seconds into the fire fight, already a little ways into the room.

" _Shit!"_ was all he said as he slid down the face of the table, bullets shredding the wood but unable to pierce the area that he was hiding behind. He had reacted on instinct when they had exploded from their hiding spots, kicking over a nearby table and ducking behind it as a rain of gunfire pelted his surroundings.

Frederick, fortunately, had been just as quick, shoving Lissa backwards and taking a burst of gunfire to the vest in place of the surprised medic. Chrom had thought the larger man was going down for a moment, but by some miracle he had remained standing, diving into a nearby booth and dragging Lissa behind him.

It seemed that more than just the coffee shop Robin had mentioned was filled with mercs; it was either that or they had been quick to search the other rooms. The captain had thought for certain that the dead bodies and general waste that the room had been laid to suggested the balaclava masked gunmen had already moved on.

Evidently not.

"Are you hurt, sir?" Frederick asked, his voice coming clearly through Chrom's headset. The captain took a few seconds to catch his breath after the close call before sounding out.

"I'm fine Frederick. Are you okay?"

"It's just a scratch," Frederick replied, though his breathing was uneven. "A bruise, actually. A big bruise. I'll be fine."

Chrom didn't think correcting the bodyguard would do anything to help the situation, so all he did was tell the man to be careful before flicking the safety on his weapon off.

"Go hiking in the wilderness, they said," Lissa complained over the radio, and he could see her frowning from across the room. "It'll be _fun_ they said!"

Ignoring the girl that clearly didn't even know what she wanted, Chrom took a deep breath before poking his head out.

Almost instantly, he was driven back into safety as a spray of splinters slapped him in the face, followed by a deafening report of gunfire.

"That was a bad idea," Chrom grunted to himself, having not even gotten to fire a shot off. He needed a new plan and fast, or they weren't going to get anywhere. The amount of gunfire that had almost taken his head off suggested that they weren't joking around – only one party was getting out of this without putting on pounds in lead. "... But what can we-"

"Hello, Chrom."

" _Holy-"_ Chrom nearly jumped out of cover at the greeting, only stopping himself with his iron will and desire to live. After his heart had calmed down a bit, he looked over to where the greeting had come from to find a certain amnesiac waiting for him with a wave and a blank expression, crouched at the other end of the table. "Robin?! … My heart…"

"Are you alright?"

"What are you doing here?!" Chrom ignored the man's question, instead responding with a question of his own. By now, the man was supposed to be on his way to Ylisse. Cordelia was supposed to be their ride out – and their reinforcements. "How did you get away from-"

"Sumia?" Robin shrugged. "I just kind of wandered off the ship after saying I was strapped in. Why did that work?"

"I'll have to ask Sumia that when I see her again," Chrom grumbled, trying to get mad at the pilot but failing. The truth was that they definitely needed reinforcements in sooner than a couple of hours, and Robin seemed to at least know how to fight. "Right. If you're here, then can you fight?"

"I've had some experience in the last hour," Robin told him, nodding hastily. "If Frederick would give me my gun back, I wouldn't be against helping out."

"Why did you come back?" said Chrom, motioning for Frederick to slide the silver pistol back across the tiles. Normally this would be a terrible decision that even Chrom would be against, but they were desperate. That, and something about Robin seemed… trustworthy. He couldn't quite explain it. "You had a way out of here."

"I'd rather help your so poorly organized unit survive the next hour than spend a day being asked questions even I don't know the answer to," Robin said, shrugging as Frederick reluctantly slid the weapon over to the amnesiac. "Besides – I don't even know who your lot is in with. You didn't tell me if you're cops or military or what.

Chrom let out a sharp breath, before slapping his hand against his forehead. That was right; he had completely forgot to tell the pair what organization they were with. That was somewhat embarrassing. "Right… We're with the Shepherds – I'm their captain, Chrom. You probably haven't heard of us if your memory's gone."

"Alright. Now, what are we doing right now?" Robin looked around, noticing the lack of movement. For all the good it did both parties, no one was doing anything. Lissa was picking her nose a little, but Chrom was too busy to care about it at the moment. "No one's doing anything."

"Yes, I know, thanks Robin." Chrom shifted, hugging his gun closer to his body. "We weren't completely equipped for this kind of engagement. All we knew was that the local police weren't responding to our attempts to communicate, and that there were shots."

"I see." Robin went silent, pulling the slide of his gun back and flicking the safety off. "They are keeping us pinned, right? Let's just throw some grenades or something and be done with it then."

Chrom was stunned by the man's line of thinking. There were several bodies scattered across the floor of the restaurant, but that wasn't to say they were all dead – the entire operation was dedicated the the preservation of life! Grenades were a no-go for sure. "No."

"Robin, we can't just throw grenades around," Lissa hissed, looking at him from where she and Frederick were hiding in the booth a ways away. Chrom was forced to relay this information due to his lack of a headset and her quiet whispering. "There are people out there that _aren't_ dead!"

Robin groaned, and Chrom realized that the young man had forgotten more than just his past – he had forgotten the entirety of his social skills too. _He's a borderline sociopath!_

"Sorry," Robin said, shaking his head. "Fine. We don't need grenades then. We just need to pretend, and that will give us the opportunity."

"What the hell are you talking about now?" Chrom asked, squinting at the man. Robin didn't reply for a moment, instead reaching down and plucking an apple off of the floor. Chrom assumed that it came from one of the fruit baskets that were lying around, but he didn't really see what relevance the apple held to the current situation. "... An apple?"

"Just follow my lead, and shoot when I say shoot," Robin told him, not making any further move to elaborate as he peered around the corner. The gunmen had all set up behind tables much like Chrom had, though they were packed tightly together, having set up a defensive wall to take cover behind.

Robin nodded.

"This is totally a grenade! See for yourself! _"_

 _Chrom was unimpressed._

 **O**

 **Modern strategies that are considered 'unorthodox' are so much more fun to come up with than medieval ones.**

 **Anyways, I'm back with this story too! I said don't expect many updates quickly, and it held true, but here's one. Might get a few more in a shorter time, since I've started playing some Rainbow 6, and that's kinda setting the mood**

 **Anyways, Robin in this story is, as I always use him (even in the game itself) default. However, in this AU, his personality is a tad different, with super long lines of thought about semantical things. He's sorta neurotic, for reasons to be revealed later.**

 **So this chapter was kinda just getting the meet and greet out of the way – now we can move on to the good shit.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Mission 03**

 **Cyber Security & The Monsters Within**

It worked in their favor, just as Robin had been hoping that it would.

The dark red fruit flew fast enough, sailing over the table that he and Chrom were hiding behind and bouncing along the tiles, until eventually he could hear it thud against the hard surface of one of the other tables on the other side of the room.

The effect proved to be instant, as immediately there were cries of shock and fear from the enemy party. A peek around the corner revealed schmucks scattering like hornets from a kicked nest, their rifles and positions forgotten in a clear lack of seniority.

The sight told Robin all he needed to know about the enemy and their experience. They seemed to be well armed, but it was obvious that they weren't as well trained as they were funded.

He hadn't quite been expecting it to work as well as it did, but is seemed that no one was really eager to be punctured and battered by the sharp debris of the explosive device, as any semblance of order and cover was quickly discarded – likely from only one man breaking formation in a panic.

"Open fire," Robin ordered calmly, bringing his pistol around and taking careful aim at one of the fleeing soldiers. The gun kicked in his hand while the muzzle flashed, and his target went down as the bullet found its mark in the man's unprotected thigh. "Remember, we need a survivor!"

If he could get his hands on one of the wounded enemy units, they might be able to shed some light on the reason for the assault. As much as it seemed like a possibility, the magician thought it a bit more likely that his loss of memories had more to do with the attack than it did the fantastic brew that he had been drinking.

To be frank, he was already getting sick of not understanding what was happening, and any information given – be it taken by force or voluntary – would be greatly appreciated.

On his mark, Chrom and Frederick both exploded from cover, their guns blazing and greeting the fleeing enemy with a rain of lead that Robin felt would not leave any survivors. A handful of the schmucks ended up getting significantly luckier than their late comrades, he noted, as he could see them ducking for nearby cover as his clever ruse was revealed; most, however, went down for the count under the hail.

" _What the hell is going on down there?!"_

Robin hesitated, looking around for the quiet and almost entirely inaudible voice. As he looked, a mouthful of colorful cursing led him closer to the source, until eventually he located a small hand-held radio that had likely fallen free of where it had been secured.

Lying abandoned and with a cracked face, the black, dated receiver continued to scream staticky rage, demanding a response. He assumed it had slid towards their side of the room when one of the less lucky hostiles had been cut down.

"Everyone's dead," Robin said into the radio, speaking clearly as to be heard over the other man's own heavy breathing. This wasn't entirely true, as Chrom and Frederick were still keeping their arms up and aimed at the pieces of cover that survivors had taken to, but that was a rather unimportant detail in his opinion. "Everyone's dead and it's terrible. That being said, Robin speaking. How may I help you?"

" _You son of a bitch!"_ Robin held the walkie talkie away from his ear a tad, as to avoid any permanent damage to his favourite ears. _"They wanted you back alive, but there's a lot of disappointment going around. When I get my hands on you, you're fucking dead! You hear me?"_

"Hold on – let me get a pen," Robin told the man on the other end quickly, deciding this was a conversation best left to someone with more experience in dealing with angry foreigners. As far as he knew, he had none to speak of himself. With that being said, the amnesiac scrolled the dial on the side down, the voice becoming fainter until the voice was gone entirely. "Wait. You're breaking up." He paused. " _Ksst._ "

Meanwhile, Chrom and Frederick were still trading shots with the survivors of the enemy squad, their deadly accurate fire being met with blind sprays of hot lead that didn't even come close to a sentient target. The opposition had at that point been pushed back so far they had nowhere to to aside from making a break for the back room of the establishment, and Robin sincerely doubted that they were dumb enough to attempt such a thing.

That left the two parties in a standoff of sorts, though Chrom and Frederick both were advancing steadily, moving from cover to cover in an attempt to get a better shot at the cowering gunmen.

Lissa hadn't moved an inch since the fight had started, and so Robin took the opportunity to change his position, scrambling across the debris-covered tiles and joining the small girl against the booth wall that she seemed to be glued to.

On closer inspection, he found that her face was drenched in sweat, and her eyes were darting around nervously. For a moment, he thought that it was because she was wary of him, before realizing that this was the most likely outcome when you took a child into a warzone.

"Hey Robin," she said quietly, voice an octave higher than when he had last heard her speak. She waved weakly. "How's it going?"

"I'm doing well, thank you." He nodded at her, playing along with the nervous banter. She didn't seem so much at ease as her words would suggest."I just came over to ask you to get your medical kit ready. After this fight, I need to stabilize one of the bad guys."

Her eyes cleared for a moment, and his request was met with a frown that managed to be both annoyed and unimpressed at the same time. If she had attempted to look angry, however, he thought that she failed miserably.

"You don't need to treat me like a child, Robin," she snarked at him, the biting tone that her words were delivered with causing him to drop his attempt at a friendly grown up impression."I'm a trained field surgeon and medic and stuff. If someone's hurt, _I_ can stitch them back together. Unless it's magic… that'd take a bit more work."

These words were delivered with a proud and upturned nose unfitting – or perhaps more than appropriate – for a girl that looked so young, and Robin was reminded of a snooty high schooler with more money that brain cells. However, there was something in her eyes that told him she could back up her claim, if only in her mind.

Suddenly, there was a sharp crack that pierced the veil of gunfire, and Robin's ears popped as the corner of the booth exploded into a shower of wooden splinters and plastic fragments.

This was enough to make Robin hope she knew what she was doing, because he found that his knowledge of medical care was extremely limited. _People die when they are killed_ summed up his skill in the trade.

Regardless of whether or not she could stitch him or one of his allies back together after being riddled with bullets, he decided that he really did not want to be shot in any part of the body, so for now he put it at the back of his mind, instead changing focus to the heavy computer that was mounted on his arm.

At a glance, he realized that he could easily identify each component of the powerful device, though where he learned such information still remained out of reach. Acting like an extension of his own arm, the dark screen lit up as if by his own will, the thunderbolt icon appearing once more.

"Magic causes different injuries?" he wondered, the fact sounding about right to his ears. She nodded vigorously at that, her pigtails bobbing like they were made of rubber. "I see."

"Don't get zapped," she told him, still nodding as if to accentuate how important the detail was. Her eyes lingered on his TOME for a moment, but she didn't call attention to it as she continued to explain, "It hurts and messes with your body. You don't know this?"

"Apparently there's a lot I don't know." He dimmed the screen again, the vents folding away and out of sight. It was a potent weapon at his disposal then, and one he seemed to know how to use. Perhaps he had some reading to do when he got out of his current predicament. "Since you've got a lack of combat training and I've got three rounds left in my weapon, I suppose it's a fitting time to ask: why is there a child on my battlefield?"

He hadn't meant to call the battlefield his, as such a statement was incorrect – the establishment as a whole technically belonged to the company that ran it, but she didn't appear to care as the fire returned to her eyes, along with an indignant flare of her nostrils.

"I told you, I'm not a kid! I'm sixteen!" she said. Her hands were clenched into fists, but that didn't make her any more of an adult in his book when her face was that of a cherub's. She wouldn't be able to get into a bar, and so she wouldn't be able to convince him otherwise either. "Are you really gonna keep bothering the medic?"

Robin took a moment to consider this, scanning her face to see if he could call her bluff. While he by no means intended to be shot, one could not plan for everything with so little information at hand, and for all he knew this child was a sociopath that could leave him for death without feeling anything.

This seemed unlikely to him personally, as she still looked incapable of hurting a fly, but by then all the hurting would already have been done.

"You win this round Ma'am," he told her, dipping his head in a show of respect. "Good bye."

As suddenly as he had appeared before the medic, he made his exit, deciding that it was safe to come out of hiding as Chrom and Frederick finished off the last of the goons that had been so rudely harassing the building's customers. While disposing of them did little good for the now late civilians, Robin assumed it would mean they wouldn't be causing any more trouble in the future.

The sight of all of the bodies that were scattered across the tiles was something he could deal with, but the fluids that leaked out of them made his stomach churn slightly, and he made sure not to step in any puddles as he journeyed through the room. He wasn't a fan of the mess.

"Hm." Chrom hummed as he watched Robin's approach, though the amnesiac couldn't respond as he carefully skipped over a body, followed closely by a rather green Lissa. The captain looked like he was searching for something, but searching for what was the question Robin found himself asking. "Nothing. Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," he said, brushing himself off as he came to stand next to Chrom and Frederick. Lissa was oddly silent as she joined them. "And you?"

"I'm alright. There were several survivors, and Frederick's talking to them now. If you'd like to ask them some questions, I won't stop you," Chrom said, gesturing to the squatting soldier beside him.

Frederick looked to be deep in concentration as he spoke quietly with one of the downed mercenaries, his face flat and betraying no emotion as his words came in steady and carefully worded questions. From what Robin could tell, the man held no sympathy for his prisoner.

"I'm losing my patience," Frederick growled, holding the man by the exposed collar of his shirt. Blood had caked the merc's thigh, and already Lissa was crouching down at his side and unzipping the medical kit she had been carrying with her. The rifle Frederick wore looked to still be close at hand, and Robin wondered how long it would take for the weapon to become closer. "Tell me how many more of you there are before I begin to hurt you."

"Calm down Frederick!" Lissa said, drawing a sharp implement from her bag and cutting away the bloodied fabric with precision that seemed unfitting for one that looked so young. "He might be going into shock."

"I've seen worse," the bodyguard growled, though he released the man's throat all the same. "He'll be fine unless he doesn't start to talk soon."

Robin watched the two as they traded words, one with his gaze focused into a glare on the enemy soldier as the other carefully patched up the wound in his thigh. It was impossible to tell which of them had landed the shot, but the fact that there was no exit wound suggested it hadn't been Frederick's bullet to down him. Regardless, the way the medic managed to calm the both of them down so quickly was frankly astounding. He had never seen anything like it without the use of sedatives or restraining orders.

These 'Shepherds' were turning out to be an interesting bunch of oddities for certain - he suddenly found himself glad to have stayed behind to assist them. He would be less glad if he died, but so far he still had a pulse to speak of suggesting it hadn't come to that yet.

"Chrom," Robin said, catching the attention of the captain as he turned away from the two and their prisoner. His leg was itchy, but it got that way around blood he guessed. Icky, nasty blood that stained clothing. Reaching behind him he unclipped the walkie talkie that he had found on the floor and tossed it to his new ally. "It's a radio from one of the terrorists. I believe their boss is on the other end, and he isn't all that happy about us killing all of his men."

Chrom looked at the radio for a moment and shook it, before finally turning the dial on the side up. Immediately the familiar cursing was blaring through the speakers again, and Chrom was forced to turn it back down a bit due to its sheer volume alone. "Yeah," he said, "No kidding."

Chrom turned away and began to murmur quietly into the radio, the warbled speech that came through in response indecipherable to Robin. With that task done with, he too turned, facing the rest of their party and cleaning his hands entirely of the vulgar torrent of language that spewed from the walkie talkie like a fountain of rage and despair. He was already getting an interesting idea as to how the rest of his day would go – more so than before, that is – and he wanted a moment to mentally prepare himself.

They were the bad guys. Him or them, and all of that.

After a couple deep-breathing exercises, he turned his attention back to their new prisoner of war, who was at the current time still trying to worm away from his captors with little success. To be fair, the man must have had a lot of willpower keeping him going, as he was at the moment surrounded by enemies and borderline incapacitated. Robin would be impressed, but for no apparent reason at all he found that he wasn't.

"I told ya you _fuckwits_ , I don't know shit!" the Plegian cursed with his thick accent. Frederick had ripped the mercenary's balaclava-goggle combination off to reveal a bald head and puffy red face. The amnesiac rescinded his previous opinion on will-power – it was immediately apparent that the man was not just brave, but most likely irredeemably intoxicated. The augmentations set into the sides of his head weren't all that impressive either – the metallic cylinder plugged into his temple looked cheap and even poorly installed. Robin guessed that it was a neural implantation of some sort, though far too bulky to be anything resembling modern tech. "Piss off, why don'tch- _ARRGH!"_

He screamed in pain as Frederick snapped one of his fingers. The sound sent a chill down Robin's spine – the man was absolutely ruthless, and it was high time to reconsider aggravating him any further; for the sake of his fingers, if nothing else. "I don't think you are telling me the truth yet." He grinned a frightening grin. "That's alright. I haven't really started asking yet."

"Down boy," Lissa ordered, sounding a bit sick. "If he enters shock, I'll have to take him into my own custody."

"I knew there was a reason we should have left you," Frederick grumbled half-heartedly, his iron grip seeming to slacken.

"Be gentle, mistah tough guy," the mercenary slurred, looking sort of out of it as he eyed the old soldier. Against all odds, he somehow smiled a pale smile of yellow teeth. "'T's my first time, yeah?"

Robin frowned as the merc's head lolled to the side, eyes hazy. What the amnesiac could only assume to be optical enhancements were set into the dead center of each grungy green orb tried to refocus, imitating real irises as they shrunk in response to the light that hit his face.

Something was off about those implants… they didn't look like they were working properly.

"Chrom," he said, looking over his shoulder. The captain, however, didn't even give him a first glance let alone a second, seemingly entirely absorbed by the heated conversation he was holding over the walkie talkie. Chrom shouted something into the receiver angrily, and the choice of words he had for the man on the other end suggested this wasn't a conversation to be interrupted either.

Returning to the now half-conscious rag doll that laid limp on the tiles mumbling to himself, Robin adjusted his gloves and reached for the side of his head.

"Robin?"

He ignored the medic, fingering the metal that was fixed into the side of the merc's head. The man's entire body tensed at the contact, but he paid that no mind either as he felt for the clips that held it in place. The idea was that they were there for maintenance, and though most were locked into place and required special tools this one wasn't – like the job had been left only half done.

He released the first clip, but never got around to the other seven latches.

The mercenary came to life like some sort of machine, a once limp arm whipping around and clocking Robin in the face. The clank that was followed by a star-burst of colors on black told him all he needed to know about the synthetic nature of the arm, and then he found himself sliding backwards across the tiles with a bloodied nose and a split lip.

" _Get away from that, ya anime haired cock sucker!"_ the mercenary screamed in tandem with Lissa. Frederick was faster than Robin had ever thought him to be, lunging forwards to restrain the man while Lissa scrambled away, but that was all he saw before his body lost strength and his forehead dropped to the cool flooring of the restaurant. _"I need these! I need them!"_

 _Ouch._

"Shit!"

"Robin!" Chrom dropped the walkie talkie and rushed over to his ally, helping our snow-haired protagonist back to his feet as best he could. He wasn't badly hurt all things considered – just a bit dazed. That hadn't been the reaction he had been expecting to be honest, and he hadn't had time to prepare himself for a robotic arm to the face. "Are you alright?! The hell were you thinking?"

"His augments are dangerous to himself and those around him," he replied shortly, trying to wipe the blood away from his mouth and other breathing holes. What an unpleasant experience – there was some red on his shirt now. "We may be able to learn-"

"Forget the augments you idiot," Chrom said, looking no more pleased to hear the news as he gave the amnesiac a once-over. "Are you okay?

Robin frowned. What an odd question – the man seemed more interested in him than the information he had gathered. He would live and that was obvious; perhaps Chrom cared more about those under his command than what they offered to him and his team. This didn't seem right… not unpleasant, just unusual.

Regardless, he brushed the captain off lightly to show that he could stand. A short distance away Frederick was still wrestling with the mercenary, who had at this point begun to froth at the mouth in a disgusting display of primitivism, like an animal driven to madness. The cylinder connected to his neural implants was cycling violently and sending sparks every which way, like it was malfunctioning.

Frankly, it was terrifying, and he was reluctant to get any closer.

"I'm fine Chrom," he said, sniffling. His nose wasn't broken, which was fortunate, but a tissue and a glass of water would not go unappreciated. "He only glanced me."

"Only glanced you, huh?" Chrom looked dubious. "Hell of an arm. Military grade augmentations?"

"Must be," Robin agreed, though the implantations installed in the man didn't look like the sort any sane R&D department would approve of. "He's lost his mind."

"Someone help me hold this psychopath down!" Frederick ordered over his shoulder, voice strained while the body beneath him continued to thrash. "He's stronger than he looks!"

"We need to get that thing out of his head," Robin said as he started towards the chaos again, shrugging off the aches in his back. Chrom followed quickly, his rifle safety clicking off at the deft movement of his hand. "Just keep him still."

Chrom gave a breathless laugh. "Easier said than done, but I'll try."

Robin crouched down a safe distance from the flailing mass of limbs as Chrom joined the fray, and for a second he briefly wondered why the captain was not asking a single question about the need to recover the modifications. Pushing the wondering aside for the time being as such questions were trivial under the circumstances, he instead dragged his dust-covered backpack out from the rubble and opened it up.

Stashed inside was a small kit of tools, a stack of books, and a small case of colourful chips.

With all due haste he shifted through the mess that had exploded within, freeing the tool kit that could easily have passed for a book due to its leathery face being styled after one. Having no time for grace he ripped it desperately from the folds of his bag.

"Any time now Robin!"

His sarcasm was not lost on Robin. He could see that the man clearly meant they had very little time in actuality, though why he felt the need to use such literary devices in such a pressing and dire situation was beyond him. Hurrying over to the thrashing merc's side with his tool kit clutched tightly to his chest, he kneeled down.

Robin felt equal amounts of disgust and curiosity as the terrorist's head snapped to look at him, what Robin once thought to be optical enhancements having at this point expanded and now glowing a fearsome red. Purple veins had started to crawl across his skin from the spinning augment, the vessels pulsing in tandem with his own heart beat.

Perhaps these weren't military augments after all – monster augments would be more accurate in his opinion.

Wasting no more time the amnesiac set the kit of tools beside him and reached almost greedily for the tech that protruded from the side of the man's head, sticking out of the temple like some sort of plug. Despite his constant struggling, Robin managed to release the remaining latches with a couple harsh tugs, each coming free with a soft click that couldn't be heard over the screams of protest and rage.

The pulsing cylinder that was buried deep within the depths of the man's thinking cage proceeded to explode violently.

Robin let out what could best be described as a horrified, disgusted, terrified and morbidly high pitched scream as he was showered with blood and skull fragments. If anyone had been paying him really close attention they might have noticed his heart stopping for several seconds, his brain shutting down and his lungs halting their functions entirely. The mess that covered his clothing was nothing compared to the mess that covered his face, which had been unwisely leaned towards the slotted modification.

He had thought the worst possible thing that could happen to him would have been his nose being chewed off entirely by the snapping jaws of the crazed mercenary. This was considerably worse.

"Disgusting!" he sputtered as his brain rebooted, and he began trying to clean himself with his dirtied hands only to spread the grossness. "I need aid… Medic!"

Chrom and Frederick disentangled themselves from the now limp mercenary, and though they too had been tainted by the explosion it was obvious that Robin had received the worst of it and, even worse, no one seemed to care.

"He's dead," Frederick observed after a moment, rising to his full height and cleaning a bit of blood off of his goggles. His uniform for the most part remained pristine, though how this came to be is a question no one has the answer to. The way he spoke suggested mild regret, though mostly passivity towards the ordeal. "Unfortunate. I recommend this be the last time we allow Robin to touch our prisoners."

"It wasn't my meddling that made his head explode," Robin grunted, stripping his coat off and tossing it aside. Even washed those stains would never come out. "They must have wired it to detonate if it was improperly handled. A fail safe to prevent reverse engineering, perhaps." He paused mid-explanation, thinking: "... In hindsight, I suppose on a technicality it was indeed my meddling that lead to his head exploding, but the main cause was likely small explosive charges planted inside the augmentations themselves. The head was mutilated to ensure that no information was recovered whilst the rest of his modifications were probably fried by- does anyone have a towel?"

"Walk it off," Chrom said, shaking his head and looking up at the ceiling. "Sumia, I'm not sure there's anything left here to find. We'll sweep the building – request a proper investigation and when I give the all clear meet us on the roof. We'll hold the perimeter until they take this off our hands… yeah, thanks." Chrom paused. "Yes, he's right here. No, he's not dead…" Slowly, he reared his head to look at Robin, and a chill ran down the amnesiac's spine. "Why yes – he is in a _lot_ of trouble."

"Uh-oh." Lissa looked even more green than she had before, now having come out of hiding. She was giving Robin a look of contempt, and because her gear was completely clean of gore and other nasty people-parts he could only assume it was due to the rather unfortunate demise of their prisoner. "Someone's in trouble..."

Robin didn't understand her need to relay this information when it was so clearly and franky menacingly announced by the captain, before reminding himself that such a childish echo was to be expected from a twelve year old girl or whatever. It was probably something Chrom had to put up with every five minutes of his life.

He thanked the gods that he was maybe an only child.

And then there were cuffs on his wrists, and something really heavy hit him in the back of his head.

Things got fuzzy.

 **O**

When he came to, the people that were around him seemed unaware of his consciousness at the time. The world as he knew it had devolved from its usual squalor into a haze of colors and blurred shapes, suggesting that his occipital lobe had absorbed most of the damage and protected his more important mental and – by extension – physical functions – such as his highly fine-tuned vocal abilities.

" _Unfhmm…"_ he murmured.

"I told you that's not how we handle these sorts of things Frederick!" a distant voice said loudly, echoing. It was like hearing it from underwater, and Robin became aware that he was likely drifting in and out of consciousness. "Completely uncalled for! Holy shit…!"

"I was following protocol. He was still a suspect, and I was required to detain him for your safety and the safety of Miss Lowell," another voice offered in explanation. "He may still be an enemy spy."

"Why the fuck did you hit him?! He could have died!"

"He was an immediate threat." A pause. "And I wanted to. He needs to talk less."

When he finally mustered the strength to lift his head from where it had gracelessly dropped onto his shoulder and his vision returned to its previous state, he found himself strapped into a seat. The safety harness that had been pulled down to hold him in place was secured nicely, and to his delight he was no longer covered in grey matter and blood. Whoever had cleaned him of the disgusting attire also possessed the decency to dress him in a new plain shirt and slacks. He didn't want to think about the fact that someone had stripped him and then redressed him, so he simply did not.

Bringing his gaze higher, he instead scanned his new location.

Above, a cage lamp illuminated cold metal walls that were lined with handholds and glowing consoles, and several seats much like the one his posterior was occupying ran along the edges of the room in neat rows. From the way his stomach lurched, he assumed they were airborne – some sort of aircraft, he guessed. Sitting a short distance away and kicking her feet, the medic he remembered to be Lissa looked sullenly down at the streamlined floor of the craft, her thoughts unreadable but her emotions obviously in disarray. He assumed it was because she was young enough for her hormones to begin affecting the way she thought, throwing her into a mental imbalance that defied all known logic in favour of black eyeliner and pierced body parts.

"I know you saw things in the war my pathetic excuse for a dad waged on Plegia, but times are changing Frederick. They _have_ changed." Chrom and Frederick were still arguing in lower voices a fair distance away, close to the steps that likely lead up to the cockpit. They likely didn't think the amnesiac could hear them now, but fortunately for Robin both he had very good ears and they were very bad whisperers. "You've watched after me since I was a kid – you're my friend. I don't want you to end up on the other side of the law."

"I'm trying to keep you safe-"

"This isn't about my safety. This is about keeping you in check. I can't have your discipline lapsing because I might be in danger. Understand?" Chrom went silent, and his anger disappeared as his shoulders slouched. "Please. Keep it together, alright?"

Frederick looked relatively mollified, and honestly completely different from when he had been speaking to Robin earlier. It was like he was a new person, and Robin found himself feeling a bit of sympathy for the man; he wanted to protect something dear to him… Robin wondered if he ever had felt the same for something or someone.

Maybe. He couldn't remember.

"I won't allow my emotions to get in the way of my duty," Frederick said, snapping out a salute as his back straightened. "It's an honour to know that you think of me as a friend. I will not fail you again, Captain."

Chrom chuckled. "Alright, no need for the salute. I'm going to talk to Lissa while Robin pretends to sleep over there. I need you to head for the storage bay and double check our equipment – I'd do it myself, but Lissa looks shaken up."

Robin sat up proper in his seat as Chrom walked past him, feeling somewhat foolish at the revelation that his ruse hadn't fooled the man as he had thought it did. More likely he had just ended up looking like an idiot, or someone suffering from a mild case of brain damage – _although,_ he conceded, _the last one may be caused by more than a failed attempt to mimic sleeping._

How hard had Frederick hit him, anyways?

Finding that his TOME was still attached to his wrist, Robin set about exploring its functions, unsure as to what exactly he was looking for. The CST chip had, as he had expected, been removed whilst he slept, but everything else looked to be working properly. It seemed that even the device had been cleaned of the gross that had been sprayed unto it.

After sifting through several of the nifty features that the computer offered, including but not limited to a calculator a calendar and a scale that for some reason was always tipped regardless of how hard Robin pushed on the surface, he finally found what he was apparently looking for.

 _Biological Statistic Feed_

He was unimpressed by the long two seconds of loading time, but he was actually _impressed_ by what the application offered.

It seemed to be giving him a live feed of his vitals, from where Robin could only guess. It was possibly linked to an implant somewhere in his body – perhaps the brain – and he had forgotten ever having it installed, but for the time being that was unimportant.

Aside from the blunt trauma that his head had received on the posterior of the cranium, just above the base, minor lacerations criss-crossed his hands and knees – likely from when he had been crawling across the ground of the Resort grounds. His cholesterol was also rather high…

 **Alert**

 _o Anomaly in skin pigmentation on the back of right hand, prone. Melanin levels low – possible signs of Vitiligo. -_ _ **This alert is marked unread. Flag raised: 89 Months, six days, eleven hours ago.**_

Robin tilted his head, for the first time taking a moment to examine himself for something more than injury.

The back of his hand, once dressed in the gloves he had been wearing for as long as he could remember, was now exposed and pale in the light. The skin was soft and unblemished for the most part – discounting the strange tattoo-like marking that sprawled across its surface like a scar.

A purple vector with six eyes, stacked one over the other symmetrically.

Strange.

Perhaps-

There was a thump from above.


	4. Chapter 4

**Mission 04**

 **Turbulence**

Robin eyed the ceiling with no small amount of curiosity, the strange anomaly on the back of his hand forgotten posthaste as his attention was quickly drawn elsewhere. The hum of the aircraft had almost masked the sound, but nothing could stop the entire vessel from rocking slightly as the lights flickered ominously. Down by the loading ramp, Chrom and Lissa's whispering had ceased, and now there was only the constant drone of the engines left in the wake of the decisive thump.

After a tense period of such stillness that one might mistake the scene for a painting wherein everyone was checking the ceiling for the word _Gullible_ , the inhabitants of the cabin jumped as the passenger bay was filled with the echoing thump of rhythmic footsteps from above. Robin caught himself at the last second, correcting himself; '... _the echoing thump of rhythmic thudding'_. The notion of a living human being walking across the top of a moving aircraft was so illogical it was almost laughable – Robin was not laughing.

"... W-What is that?" Lissa spoke up, her evident distress seemingly foregone in favour of tense fear. Her voice shook, but Chrom unbuckled his harness and climbed from his seat without answering her, his gaze still locked on the section of the roof where the thunderous but hollow heartbeat-like noise was coming from. Robin, who for the life of him could not figure out how to unlock the safety bar that kept him seated, could only watch as the Captain followed the sound like a zombie, wordless and brainless. "Chrom?"

"Turbulence, perhaps," Robin offered from his seat, still struggling with his harness. He was beginning to think that it wasn't just for his safety, but also to restrain him much like they would a prisoner. The knob-like device that was set in the padding on the bar was likely encoded to the DNA of these 'Shepherds'. "How do I get out of this?"

"You stay there," Chrom ordered without looking his way. The Captain had drawn a compact pistol from the holster that was strapped just below his hip, and Robin frowned as he clicked the safety off with a flick of his finger. "Sumia?" he called out, not taking his gaze away from the roof. Where he stopped, so too did the thumping, and the man was left standing directly under an emergency escape hatch that looked to be heavily barred from the inside, with various warnings printed on it in bold red letters. "You hear that? What is it? A bird?"

The speakers crackled to life, but his question was only greeted with garbled static for a moment as the lights flickered again. As if to offer an explanation, thunder rolled in the distance, muffled by the cold steel walls of the cabin.

And then there was a gunshot.

Robin flinched in his chair, at first thinking that Chrom himself had been the one to fire the shot, but this proved to not be the case when a shroud of sparks dropped from the ceiling and several lights gave out on their functions entirely, somewhat darkening the space. He could hear Lissa scream from the other side of the cabin as more shots followed and more sparks flew, showering the room in even more shrapnel as electrical components exploded violently. The entire bay was filled with a sharp whistling sound as wind screamed into the ship through the fresh bullet holes in the roof, and Chrom only barely threw himself to the side before a stray shot burrowed into the galvanized steel at his feet.

"Well that's unusual," Robin noted mildly from his seat, deciding that at this point there was not much he could do aside from making observations for posterity. He was not sure if Chrom would appreciate the effort, but at least Fredderick wouldn't be able to accuse him of not trying. He turned his gaze to the emergency escape hatch as it shook in its frame, the steel release bar that crossed over it becoming a concentrated blur from the vibrations. "Ylisse is home to some interesting avians, isn't it Chrom? I did not realize 'ballistic killing machine' was a natural evolution in this country. It's quite fascinating."

"Not now, Robin!" Chrom snarled after his shock had passed, and Robin cocked an eyebrow as the Captain reached over and stuck his fingers into the seams of the metal panels that lined the walls, likely to protect important electrical wiring and other components. Lissa, meanwhile, continued to scream and be a general nuisance over by the loading ramp. Chrom gritted his teeth and turned his head away, his single sleeve straining against the effort as the muscles in his exposed left arm flexed under the stress. "Hold on Lissa!"

A series of cracks sounded out like gunfire while bolts shot off in random directions like bullets, and Robin watched in amazement as the steel panel was ripped clean from the wall. At the same time, the material of the Captain's single sleeve gave way and split in several places, revealing gleaming silver steel beneath.

"You're missing your arm?" Robin said stupidly, feeling a strange sense of nostalgia at the sight of the silver prosthetic. It shone like chrome, and a unique crest had been decaled across his shoulder in blue.

Chrom didn't reply as he hauled the steel panel over his head and crossed the cabin, gunfire ringing off of the makeshift shield when he passed under the hotspot of ballistic warfare that had erupted on the roof of the ship. Robin wasn't quite sure what to think about his new companions anymore while the Captain urged his sister to follow him back to Robin's side, shielding the two of them with what should have been an incredibly difficult to carry sheet of metal.

"You're alright," Chrom told her while she turned and pressed her back against the wall, beside the cockpit door. He dropped the sheet unceremoniously, before giving Robin a strange look. "Why are you still sitting? You can get up now – the whole 'stay there' thing went out the window when people started shooting."

"You need to let me out," Robin said exasperatedly, gesturing to the knob on the bar that held him in place. "Your technology is too complex for even my brilliant mind to-"

The aforementioned hatch suddenly exploded inwards violently in a shower of debris, the bar rending as the thick trapdoor dropped into the room with a heavy metal thunking sound. The screaming wind became even louder than before, and Lissa covered her ears as Chrom forced open the cockpit door and shoved her inside, wind whipping through his hair and casting blue locks in front of his face. _"Push down and twist, for fuck's sake!"_

If Robin had been anyone else, this revelation would have perhaps embarrassed him somewhat. Beings that Robin was one of a kind however, he calmly pushed down hard on the knob and twisted it the the side. There was a soft and barely audible click to be heard over the chaos as the safety bar lifted up and over his head, most likely due to some sort of spring loading mechanism. After all, it was quite easily justified that such a mechanic was known as 'child proofing', and most certainly was one of the last things he expected to see in a military aircraft, making the list just behind vending machines and stripper poles.

Briefly, however, he did wonder what an inability to bypass a child safety mechanism made him. He stopped wondering rather quickly, as it would likely be a fruitless train of thought, if not mildly demoralizing.

Now freed from the confines of the chair, the amnesiac lurched forward onto his hands and knees, crawling towards the safe end of the ship that Chrom and Lissa had inhabited. While doing so, he eyed Chrom with what some might describe as moderate contempt. He himself would refrain from commenting on it if asked later, as in his mind the child proof harness ordeal had already been wiped from his account of the event. "I require a weapon at the earliest convenience," he called to the Captain as a shot ricocheted off of the floor by his hand. He crawled faster. "Though the sooner, the better, of course."

"Let me think!"

Robin came to a stop beside the man, and waited patiently, though keeping his hopes realistic.

Suddenly, a body dropped down through the hatch like a ragdoll, and both men jumped wildly as the sound of cracking bones was somehow so clear over the chaotic happenings around them. Robin could not see the man's face, but decided that he did not wish to. Interestingly enough, the body of what he presumed to be an enemy soldier was clad in gear not entirely unlike that of the mercenaries from the resort.

"You killed them with your mind?" Robin was impressed. Obviously, he had vastly underestimated his companion's cognitive capabilities.

Chrom didn't acknowledge the remark as he looked up, peering through the hole in the ceiling where the hatch used to be. "I don't think they're shooting at us," he finally said, open-mouthed. "I think they're fighting someone or something else up there."

"I believe they're losing, then," Robin said.

The cockpit door slid open, and Robin caught a glance of Lissa's wide and fearful eyes for just a moment before a bulkier figure stepped through, one rifle slung over his shoulder and another held loosely in his grasp. Frederick looked down at the pair with an unreadable expression, dressed in the heavy ballistic protection he had worn previously and seemingly ready for battle. "I came as soon as I could, sir. I'm glad you're alright."

"Couldn't have picked a better time," Chrom said as the bodyguard passed his charge one of the rifles and a spare pair of goggles. Robin would beg to differ, but now hardly seemed like the time as the older man's sharp eyes turned on the amnesiac. The cold unfeeling darkness within reverberated with the sounds of finger bones snapping, and Robin unconsciously shivered.

"You're not dead," Frederick said to him, and Robin was inclined to agree. The old soldier tossed something, and Robin reflexively tried to swipe it out of the air, fumbling for a moment before securing it in his grasp. When he opened his hand, he found a small green computer chip resting in his palm – it felt unusually cool to the touch, and was decorated with a plain crest in the center. "Don't betray this trust, or I'll put a bullet in you myself."

"Any sane person would choose life," Robin told him. He almost felt the need to reassure him, however, as those cold unfeeling orbs lingered on him for a moment in a way that was almost insulting. "I am sane. Stop looking at me, it makes me uncomfortable."

"Good," was all Frederick said before turning back to Chrom. "Those idiots up there damaged the thrusters with their shooting. Sumia says she can't keep us in the air for much longer, and that we must make an emergency landing soon or risk a crash landing in lieu."

Chrom grimaced as he pulled the bolt of his rifle back, the click of rounds chambering crisp and obviously bringing some peace of mind t0 the Captain as he slid his pistol over to Robin. "Can't she shake them off?"

"The engines were hit before she even knew what was happening. This may have been a coordinated strike, or just bad luck. Either way, we need to deal with-"

There was a cry of shock from Chrom and a sniffle of distress from Robin as the entire aircraft rocked violently, the ground beneath their feet tilting and causing rain to slosh haphazardly across the deck, making the metal slick with wet. Robin felt weightless for a moment as he flew through the air, before slamming into the wall hard with his shoulder. Something crunched beneath his weight, and then he crashed to the ground as the craft righted itself.

"Shit," Chrom gasped from beside Robin, winded from whatever he had smashed into. "We need a plan – fast."

On the other side of the cabin, the loading ramp had begun to extend, seemingly on its own accord, and the bay was flooded with ice-cold air that made Robin shiver. When asked what had happened later, he would reluctantly claim that it had nothing to do with him really, and upon the matter being pressed he might have, with more reluctance, admitted that the loading ramp's opening may possibly have coincided with whatever he had slammed into. Perhaps, the loading ramp controls had been what he had crashed into, maybe.

Whatever the case may be, when the ship shook again, with the floors slippery and wet and gravity changing wildly while the aircraft struggled to remain flying, its passengers were all dislodged like fleas, and the night sky was filled with tumbling soldiers.

 **O**

 _Robin… Robin!_

"Robin! Wake the fuck up!"

When his eyelids flickered open to reveal calculating and alert umber orbs, he quickly assessed that he was in freefall and that his death was most likely approaching at a rather rapid rate. He wasn't quite sure how long he had been unconscious, but he had the faintest recollection of his head smashing into something before the darkness had set in. Now that he was awake, however, the pain was throbbing quite terribly, and he briefly wondered how many more blows to the head he would be able to take before he refreshed his amnesia. It wasn't exactly a desirable prospect, but perhaps forgetting the past twenty-four hours would be in his mental health's best interest.

Wind rushed past his face, invisible claws raking through his hair and clothing as he plunged through the night sky. Rain prickled against his exposed skin like ice, with beams of stark white light from the moon catching the droplets and painting liquid silver vectors through the air in random patterns. While most would call it beautiful, he was merely feeling cold and disappointed that he had awoken before he hit the ground.

He had been in the most pleasant dream as well. He couldn't remember what it was about, but he was certain that anywhere was better than his current predicament.

"Did you wake me up to die?" he asked seriously, feeling the grip on his shirt tighten. The silvery fingers were attached to a metal arm, which was attached to a rather aggravated looking Chrom, who was as drenched from the rain as he was. The Captain must have been holding onto him so that he didn't drift off, and to his left Frederick was falling with a face so stoic that Robin wasn't sure the man even knew that he was alive to begin with. It was similar to watching a statue dropped from an airplane – the statue simply did not care, and in the face of death, it was unchanging. Together, the three of them formed a small circle of locked arms. Perhaps their stain would be a ring shape on the earth below; he prayed that it would be a symmetrical ring, as he was not all that fond of ovals for personal reasons.

"Welcome back to the land of the living," Chrom said grimly. "You had me worried there; I was afraid that you were in a coma. Or dead."

"My stay will most likely be short."

"Stop being a smart ass and keep your eyes up," Chrom growled, and Robin flinched wickedly as a bullet slashed through the air between them. His eyes followed the shot, almost in slow motion as the lead crashed through raindrops and made a tube of water in the air for a fraction of a second. "Whoever these guys are, they're relentless."

"They're still trying to kill us as we all fall to our doom," Robin observed sagely, tracking the shot and spotting several shapes that plummeted through the air after them a moderate distance overhead. Only because they were dark silhouettes against the moon could he see them, and a part of him did not wish to believe that those were actually people. Things were getting ridiculous. "I admire their tenacity."

"Forget them!" Chrom snapped, bringing their formation uncomfortably tight. Their faces were only maybe a little over a foot away from one another, and no matter how hard he tried Robin could not break free from their hold on his arms. The Mage had a very strict rule about how close people came to him, and they were breaking it in more ways than he had thought possible with their prolonged contact. He felt claustrophobic, which was ironic due to the fact that he must have been hundreds of feet in the sky. "We need to put our heads together, or we can kiss our asses goodbye!"

"I tuned out for a second. I think the air up here is too thin for me to think clearly," Robin admitted, blinking rain out of his eyes. "Or maybe I'm lapsing into a miniature coma after so much head trauma. I only heard something about ass kissing."

Chrom cursed, but it was lost in the wind.

Robin jolted to life, managing to tear his arm free from the triangle of hope before jamming his hand into his pocket. For a few dreadful moments, he thought that he had lost it, but he let out a sigh of relief as his fingers closed around the small CST chip that Frederick had given him on the aircraft. Wasting no time, he brought it up and plugged it into the slot on his TOME, the port closing automatically as the vents extended and the screen flickered to life.

Chrom gave him a rather queer look as another bullet whistled past them. "You figured something out?"

"Possibly," Robin admitted. "I believe I might have seen this in a video game once."

He wasn't sure, but it looked like Chrom was kissing his ass goodbye.

 **O**

A strong wind cleaved across the forest floor, and the clearing was swallowed by the world's smallest hurricane of dirt and leaves. Shrubbery was shredded to bits by the razor-sharp blades of air, and bark was dislodged from tree trunks only as so that they could become one with the storm and slash through the air in the form of small chunks of nonlethal debris. The storm had only just hit when three figures dropped into the forest following closely after it, their descent slowed considerably by the cushion of powerful winds that lingered on the ground for just a moment before racing off into the trees and upsetting distant branches and forestry.

Robin was the first to land, his stomach leaping up to somewhere in his throat as his drop was suddenly brought to a momentary halt, only a few dainty feet from what would surely have been a fatal impact. The winds swallowed him whole, rushing around him and racing through his clothing as he was consumed by the storm until eventually, he dropped the last few feet into the soft dirt below.

He could hear his allies thumping down onto the forest bottom as he had, not as if they had just fallen hundreds of feet before a sweet reunion with the Earth but rather like they had tripped and toppled from the top of a slide. That wasn't to say that it did not knock the wind out of him, but he had decided that he had caught more than enough air for the day as it already was.

"Holy shit," Chrom gasped loudly, the first to speak. Robin sat up and watched the Captain climb to his feet, staggering but not falling down while his gaze turned skywards. He looked quite dazed and off-balance, but the fact that he was standing suggested that he was not at all dead, and that seemed to be good enough for the man. He cheered loudly: "We're alive!"

Meanwhile, on Robin's forearm, his attention was drawn to the TOME that had saved his life only moments prior as wisps of black smoke escaped from the CST slot and steam was violently expelled from the vents in beams of concentrated heat and vapor. The air around it was distorted heavily by the heat that poured out from every seam in the device, and he was forced to look away to avoid getting a face full of steam.

After a couple of seconds the machine cooled and, with what Robin thought to be a not at all unpleasant chime, the charred remnants of what he assumed to have been the CST card were ejected from the smoking slot, melted and blackened to the point where it was barely recognizable.

"Unfortunate," Robin said after the card had stopped smoldering in the dirt. Chrom was dusting himself off while Frederick checked his charge for external injury at the same time, and they painted a rather amusing picture while they both tried to complete their tasks simultaneously. Frederick still seemed to have his rifle slung over his shoulder, but Chrom's gun appeared to have vanished – most likely lost when they were ejected from the aircraft – and now only the unique sword remained strapped on his back. Robin had yet to see the man use the weapon, but at the same time, he hadn't discarded it with the rest of his combat gear earlier. This detail did not get past the amnesiac, as few did. "I suppose we could have all died horribly, in which case I would be under such unfortunate circumstances I literally would not have been able to voice my distress; it's still a shame that I am once again unarmed."

"Stop! Gods! ...Quite the caster, aren't you?" said Chrom after managing to ward off Frederick's overbearing attempt to ensure his charge would manage to survive the next five minutes on his own. Though it seemed he was trying to act suspicious once again, it was clear Chrom was rather grateful that Robin had managed to delay their not-so-certain dooms indefinitely, and a wide grin was now plastered on his face. "Never seen someone fry one of their spell cards before."

Robin frowned at this, looking back down to the chip after taking a moment to locate it in the dirt again. The fact that the conduit had been destroyed distressed him mildly, but at the same time he found that it was not quite surprising. Almost nostalgic, he might have mused if he didn't have what was possibly double amnesia at this point. Something that could almost be described as a smile made its way onto his face, but Robin did not smile for it caused wrinkles which in turn might reveal to the enemy what his personality was like, which could furthermore then be manipulated should said enemy possess a mind of equal (but not superior, for no mind was superior to his) tactical prowess. He smiled inwardly, however.

"All the more bang for your buck I guess," Chrom said with a shrug.

" _Hold._ "

Frederick spoke for the first time since they had been on the aircraft together, and the stern snap to his voice made the snow-haired magician flinch. Chrom however went stock still, almost as if he was trying to imitate Frederick. Robin found that this comparison brought him some joy, and decided to himself then that from here on forth standing as still as a statue would be known as Fredericking. It seemed like one of the more polite verbs to substitute with his name, anyways. Not wishing to break the mold, Robin did his best to Frederick like Chrom was, his muscles tensing while the air became silent save for the chirping of crickets and hooting of owls. Everything became still and quiet.

Robin looked around, curious and moderately confused.

" _Listen,"_ Frederick said, his hard eyes shining in the dim light that broke through the leaves overhead.

And so they listened.

In the distance, gunfire had begun to crack, the echoing sounds of shots passing between the trees and almost appearing to come from every direction at once. Robin's inward smile died a rather terrible death as he looked around slowly, attempting to pinpoint where the sound was coming from. The notion that the men that had attacked the ship he had been riding on had somehow survived a hundred foot fall was once again one he found to be ridiculous in every sense of the word, and yet it earned not a chuckle from him despite its laughability.

"I think if we hold out-" the bodyguard began,

"-Follow me," Chrom ordered just as quickly, apparently not having heard the man as he sprinted off into the trees without another command given.

"You do this every day?" Robin asked Frederick as they began to follow him. "I believe I am starting to understand why you are as you are."

"Please stop psychoanalyzing me."

 **O**

 **Going kind of slow, and a bit inconsistent in its flow, but I feel like it deserves an update. It's deserved an update for some time now, actually. Sorry I'm late!**


	5. Chapter 5

**Mission 05**

 **Labrats**

The forest was a serene and beautiful place at night. The trees were knit together like wicker in some areas, forming almost walled passages as if the saplings of a time long past had grown from plants into a lissome palace of oak, painted in monochromatic strokes of blue and finished with graceful beams of silver moonlight. It was almost a sad place, but so still that it could be a work of art – a moment in time forever preserved by the hand of an artist.

A flock of birds erupted from the branches they had been nesting in as flames washed across the trunks like spilled ink, splashing into the grass and sending fire racing up the wood and into the leaves overhead. A chunk of burning oak dropped with a weighty crash into a nearby bush, and a dashing figure only just dove between a pair of trees that were crossed like swords before more racing flames chased after him, hot on his heels and moving not as any normal fire ever would.

He hit the ground in a roll, coming up almost instantly and drawing a weapon from the holster at his side. The gun's dark iron flashed in the light that broke through the trees, and then thunder exploded from its muzzle, the flashing light catching in the little rain that slipped through the leaves overhead and giving the pistol a golden hue as it kicked in his hands. Lead shrieked through the air and slashed through the side of one of the trees in a shower of splinters, until the shot found its mark and the dark figure that had been giving chase after him was sent spinning to the ground in the wake of a red mist.

The soldier that had fired the gun looked out of place in the peaceful forest, his hoodie and the strange vest that Robin could only assume was armor giving him the appearance of some sort of cross between a burglar and a member of an elite military unit. When he turned and glanced towards them, Robin could hear Frederick begin to ready his rifle in preparations for possible conflict, and the amnesiac could see their own faces reflected in the shiny tinted goggles that masked the soldier's eyes. His mouth, hidden by a ratty grey scarf, was revealed for a second – gaping and awed, as if they couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Robin was quite sure that he was not all that good at reading people deeply, and perhaps this is why he found himself just as perplexed as the soldier seemed to be, watching as his firearm hand dropped limply to his side and they stood as still as a Frederick, silhouetted by the miniature forest fire that had broken out behind them while raindrops speckled the cool glass of their goggles.

"Chrom Lowell…"

The voice was almost feminine when it came forth in a spoken whisper, and for a fleeting moment Robin wondered if the man was actually a man at all as he took a step forwards and lifted his empty hand towards them, like a puppet on strings in a sappy play. The soldier's hood was drawn up, allowing short blue locks of dark hair to escape around the edges, and Robin looked over to Chrom, who was staring back at the soldier with a surprised expression.

Perhaps they were related?

"Drop the weapon and put your hands over your head." Frederick's voice came strong and cold, like stone as he stepped past his companions with his rifle raised. The barrel shone in the light cast by the fire, gleaming dangerously even as Chrom moved with an outstretched hand and pushed the barrel downwards slightly. "State your name, and your business-..." Frederick paused. "... On the top of our airborne PEGASUS."

The man turned his body and began lifting his pistol again, and Robin felt static begin to crackle at the tips of his fingers while his TOME began to hum quietly at his side. He didn't have a CST – whatever was at his fingertips wasn't any power that he could use effectively, but most likely raw and unfocused, like any potential without a medium to work through. Perhaps it chose to manifest as tingling electricity as an after effect of his Thunder CST, but a part of him knew it would only be for show or making someone's hair stand up; magic had limitations. Everything did.

Chrom tensed and Frederick began to raise his rifle again, his jaw set and his mouth a thin, and Robin thought magma might begin to leak from the crow's feet wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, but then the soldier spoke again.

"Relax," he said, louder this time. His head bowed as he peered down the sights of his gun at them. "I'm about to save your lives." He jerked his head towards them. "... From _him."_

The three dove in different directions as the gun kicked in his hands, and a bullet whistled through an empty space with trained precision, and Robin knew that the shot wouldn't have hit any of them unless they had actively tried to get in the way of the round. There was a meaty thunk from behind the trio as Robin slid through the slick grass, and a soldier unlike any he had seen before toppled backwards onto the ground from where he had been sneaking up on them, the wickedly sharp knife's blade flashing brightly in a stray bar of moonlight as it sailed through the air, before burying itself in the forest floor silently.

"You can call me Marth, sir," 'Marth' said. He holstered his pistol and closed the distance between them, only casting a glance over his shoulder into the flaming trees before returning his focus to the three men that were scattered before him. Robin felt annoyed by how easily they had been divided – if this had been an enemy after all, or still was an enemy, they would be dead. Chrom's lack of strategy was only admirable if his intentions were spurred by a subtle death wish, and he wondered how these 'Shepherds' had managed to get by as they did. "As for my business… well, that's my own. But I'm glad that I found you; I have a warning that you need to hear."

"I need answers first," Chrom said, climbing to his feet. His surprise was fading quickly, and now he looked frustratedly towards the new arrival. Robin didn't blame him – the man was being annoyingly cryptic, and while he did enjoy solving puzzles in his free time now was not exactly a stellar moment for unravelling secrets. Chrom stepped towards the soldier and the soldier stepped back, but not once did his hand even twitch towards the weapon at his side. "How about for a start, you tell me who's trying to kill us – if you're really an ally, I suspect that you'd be able to tell us that much."

Marth pulled down his scarf to reveal pursed lips, as if he were trying to decide on how much he could say before his mysterious warrior trope was destroyed. Even Robin felt his patience beginning to wane as the sounds of movement in the shrubbery became audible, coming from all around them now as their enemies surely zeroed in on their location. The wicker walls of tightly woven tree trunks offered protection on one side, but otherwise they were sitting ducks as smoke spiraled into the air from where the ever growing fire burned hotly. It was almost painful to witness such incapable cognitive functionality – the man seemed to be at war with himself, in a metaphorical sense of course.

"I understand the urgency you must feel. I suppose you will need to know your enemy if you want to survive," Marth finally said, folding his arms as the tension somewhat left his body and he relaxed. He sounded somewhat placated, and more… human. Robin suspected that they had not gotten all that much of a glimpse into the man's character after all – suspected that the greeting had been for show, like an actor on stage. But… that wasn't completely true. Robin, in all his less than twenty four hours of memorable living, had never heard such a confusing mixture of emotion put into two words as he just had. _Chrom Lowell…_ "I don't see any point in trying to keep this particular secret anyways. These soldiers... aren't any ordinary soldiers – they're augmented killing machines."

Robin was not phased by the blunt announcement, instead waiting with what some might describe as mildly apathetic but mostly twisted grim curiosity. He was willing to wait, now that the story had become more… interesting.

Meanwhile, Chrom's reply was not immediate, his gaze dropping from Marth to the prosthetic arm that hung limply at his side. The polished surface had been scratched lightly from tumbling through dirt and staggering through bramble, but still it gleamed brilliantly in the light of the fire. He didn't seem entirely there while the metal fingers attached to the end flexed restlessly, and finally the trance was broken as his hand closed into a tight fist.

"Augmented soldiers aren't exactly uncommon in this day and age," he finally said, sounding bitter when he looked back up. The pause had been noticeable, and even Marth looked mildly distressed by the Captain's tone of voice. "Nearly every military outfit in the world uses them at this point-"

"-Not these kind," Marth said just as quickly, not commenting on the pause. Robin was curious, and found himself wondering what stories lurked beneath the shiny chrome exterior of the metal arm. It was hardly his concern, but perhaps some niggling notion in the back of his mind was claiming that the knowledge might have some value. "These creatures are more than just soldiers; they're biological weapons. They can't feel fear or emotions anymore," he said, "They're too far gone for that. All they remember is how to track and how to kill – how to destroy and cause pain. They're abominations. You don't need to take my word for it," he said, glancing over his shoulder as his hand neared his weapon. "... You'll see them soon enough."

Robin heard screams in the distance; inhuman vocals filled with anger. While normally knowing one's enemy was always better than fighting against the unknown, the noise sent something akin to a chill down his spine and he reassessed the situation. "I sincerely hope that we will all get along," he said, not just half heartedly but rather with no heart at all.

"Not now Robin." Chrom dismissed his remark with a deft wave of his hand, and for what might have been the first time Marth cocked his head and turned his concealed gaze towards the amnesiac. Something flashed across his face again – recognition, Robin thought decidedly. The Captain turned back to the mysterious soldier, his jaw set. "As for you, I need more answers. More to go on than a fake name and these experiments," he pressed, "Why is this happening? Who do these super soldiers work for?"

Marth looked as if he were in pain, but there were no visible injuries on his body. Robin briefly wondered how the man had survived the fall if he had been one of the combatants that was flung from the airship, but pushed it aside for the time being. They had many important questions and so little time… He checked his TOME, and the clock read 23:02. "I cannot tell you that," Marth hissed. "Not yet."

"You are not inspiring confidence in me, Marth," Robin cut in again, checking the computer mounted on his wrist. They had many questions that they wished to have answered, and yet so little time to talk with hostile forces closing in swiftly. If things did not change quickly, they would soon find themselves surrounded in the small clearing of trees, and that would be the end of their story. He would much rather not die surrounded by plants, as he would only decompose and be consumed by the roots – he would not be remembered, and he would have nothing to remember either. The clock now read 23:03. "I suppose instead of us asking about what you can't tell us, perhaps you'd be so inclined to reveal what you _can_ tell us?" He didn't mean to sound condescending or sarcastic, as he was both feeling the urgency of the situation at hand and physically incapable of trying to sound sarcastic or condescending, but Marth did not look pleased, so he amended; "If it wouldn't be too much trouble, of course."

"I'm not supposed to say much more," Marth snapped with surprising venom. Robin couldn't recall saying anything that might have upset or angered the man, but he supposed even the slightest signs of aggression could set one off if they were at a certain point of instability. Regardless, it seemed that much like with Frederick this man was not going to be inviting the amnesiac to any future birthday parties. "You don't know what kind of situation we're all in right now."

"I know that you are evading my questions and the questions of my cohorts," Robin stated simply. Social grace, he decided, was not a luxury that they could afford. He did not even know where his wallet was, he realized; this may pose a problem in the future. "And I know that you refuse to tell us why, despite the danger we are in. You've given us nothing but a fabricated identity and fantastical stories."

Robin knew he was the last person that should be accusing someone else of being a liar when he was already the subject of a similar investigation, but he was acting on instinct as he scanned this 'Marth's clothing.

"What do you think that makes you out to be, Marth?"

Marth looked to be shocked into silence, and if Robin had been expecting a retort of some sort he would have been quite terribly disappointed in their saviour. The man's mouth opened and closed without a sound, and now he could hear the snapping of twigs drawing uncomfortably near.

"... A spy." Marth sounded stunned. He spoke louder, "A spy!"

"... Yes," Robin agreed slowly, nodding. He hadn't expected such a reaction, but he supposed the ball was in his court now, metaphorically. But he couldn't think of anything to say in response – what more was there to be said, after all?" "A spy."

When Marth went for his gun, reactions were varied.

Robin's first instinct was to extend his left hand, pointing two fingers towards the soldier as static crackled across them with a voltage so high he could see the electricity dancing between the digits.

But just as soon he dropped it when nothing leapt forth from his fingertips, and he cursed himself for forgetting that he was still lacking a CST – he was getting the feeling that he had rarely been without one in his past life, and the reflexive casting motion was likely born from this. He dropped to one knee and grabbed the first thing he could find – a rock – and tested its weight. If he was lucky, Marth had glass bones and paper skin. Robin, however, fully understood that he was not lucky, and threw the rock aside in disgust to search for a bigger stone to throw.

Marth had just drawn his firearm from its holster when something heavy crashed into Robin's ribs like a lion pouncing on its prey, and just when he'd thought he'd found the perfect rock to throw as well. The air was knocked from his lungs, and he was flung almost a full three meters backwards by the force of the impact. When his ride on the slick grass stopped and the lights stopped being so bright, he tried to climb back to his feet as quickly as he could only for something powerful and cold to push down hard on his chest and force him back to the ground.

"What the hell?!" Chrom shouted, spinning to face him when Robin let out a pained and surprised shout in response to the crushing weight on his torso. The pressure began to intensify quickly as the grass flattened underneath him and his unseen attacker, but no matter how hard he looked the amnesiac could not see anything amiss above him – his view of the dark skies and treetops was wholly unobstructed by whatever was trying to crush his lungs like twin soda cans, and he for one moment took the situation to the logical extreme.

"Oh no, help," he said without thinking, trying to push off whatever was lounging on top of him like he was a pool chair of immensely fleshy proportions. "I'm about to be sexually assaulted by a ghost."

"Robin!" Chrom shouted, and then for the briefest moment in time the man before him seemed to change from the idiot that let emotions control him like he was a puppet on strings; the Captain lunged towards Frederick and ripped the rifle out of the bodyguard's hands, before pivoting on his heels with grace that Robin wouldn't have expected from him. The barrel whipped around and the muzzle's black maw glared, waiting to release its lead flames. "Hold on!"

Robin, who for his own part was wondering what else the man was expecting he might try to pull, thought that he could hear his ribs creaking from the stress that was being put on his ribcage. If the pressure built up any further, the bones beneath the bruising flesh would snap like branches – and most likely collapse inwards, puncturing his lungs and leaving him to drown in his own blood in an agonizingly slow and ironic death.

He felt pleased by the number of layers there were to that humorous statement. Ironic. What a jokester he was turning out to be.

The air above him shimmered ever so slightly, and his eyes returned to the empty space that his would-be-attacker must have been occupying on some level. Now that his shock had faded, his statement seemed rather ridiculous to him; there were no such thing as ghosts, and thus this must have been something else entirely. But what that thing was, he did not know for certain – it was a mystery to him how one could remain invisible to the naked eye without being incredibly small, incredibly fast, transparent, reflective, or bending light...

Oh yes, he realized quite suddenly. This was no ghost at all.

"You think yourself a ghost, but I'm certain you'll bleed like anyone else does," he told the shimmer matter-of-factly. Every breath he took sent streaks of pain racing through his chest, and Chrom seemed to be trying to get a better shot at his ally's invisible assailant. Robin supposed that he could help the Captain with that, and was decidedly set on not playing the damsel in distress now or ever – weakness would be weeded out, he was sure as lightning danced between his fingers like amphibious webbing.

Without a CST, magic was terribly ineffective for various reasons. Without a conduit, the natural power found in a caster was nigh useless in almost any given situation. Sure, one could do absolutely novel things with their inherent magical potential, like moving small objects or some other menial task, but without a spell card one's combat effectiveness was reduced to almost zero. What was an artist to do, Robin could muse, when they only had paint and canvas?

A more juvenile mind might come to a rather juvenile conclusion; an artist without a brush would just have to paint with their fingers.

His vision blurred and darkened, the sounds of a million raindrops crashing down into the forest from the stormy skies becoming distant and muffled. The electricity's glow bloomed, and the weight on his chest shifted. The raindrops never reached Robin as he lay deathly still, instead stopping short just above him – just where his unseen attacker must have lurked like a panther, slowly and lethargically and dangerously.

And wet, like an umbrella.

"And if you were to suddenly stop being invisible?" Robin could feel the amperage ebbing his strength away rapidly as the volts of unrefined power crackled at his fingertips. It would never be as strong as if he had access to a CST, but did that matter when the conditions were so perfect? He thought not. His arm felt like lead, but he managed to muster the strength to bring his hand up, and he clenched his teeth as the weight began to shift faster, the assassin sensing the imminent danger all too late to do anything about it. He brought and pushed the digits against the shimmering in the air, and a wicked smirk pulled at the corner of his mouth. "Well then," he breathed, "Then I suppose you wouldn't be any ghost at all, now would you?"

He pushed as hard as he could, clawed fingers surging with power and hooking into the slick armor that he could not see.

The world lit up in a brilliant flash of light, and there was an inhumanely high shriek as a lean humanoid figure flickered into sight. The man that kneeled on Robin's chest was clad in strange and tightly fitting armor and clothing, and as he arched his back and let out a howl electricity leapt from his figure and sparks exploded from the various and more delicate workings of his armor.

The air smelled of burning flesh and fried circuitry as air returned to Robin's lungs.

"Cloaking technology!" Chrom said in warning, his muzzle tracking the enemy spy while it leapt away from Robin's supine figure and scuttled across the ground like it was a spidermonkey of some sort. The amnesiac gasped for air, but smoke entered his lungs. "Frederick, secure Marth!"

Marth, Robin noted when Frederick looked around with grim features, had vanished without so much as a goodbye. This meant that they only had one gun between the three of them now – one sword and a world full of troubles too, he supposed.

The spy darted across the slick grass and rolled evasively behind a tree as Chrom's shots sent clods of mud into the air, before drawing a pistol from somewhere on his person and taking cover against the oak. The three red lights of his goggles were fierce looking and most likely designed to inspire fear as lightning flashed and the sky rumbled angrily, casting dark shadows where only those lights stared back at the group.

"Robin, move!" Frederick snarled, sprinting towards the still reeling amnesiac. Robin didn't have the energy to flinch as the soft thump of a suppressed gun being fired followed the echo of thunder, and Frederick slid to a stop in front of the magician, jerking slightly as bullets rained onto the back of his vest. He did not look pleased, and Robin jolted back to life, patting out the small fire that had formed on his shirt. His clothing had evidently not been as conductive as the spy's, and while his skin stung he was not in immense pain. "Get up now, or I'll have to carry you," the bodyguard said.

Chrom's rifle bucked and shots rang out like toned down thunder, never giving the clearing a moment of silence as his weapon fire followed in the echo of his opponent's. The rain had begun to fade away, slowly but surely as bullets went back and forth through the forest.

"Where the hell did he come from?" Frederick demanded when he and the amnesiac had made it to the safety of the tree Chrom had taken to as cover. Heat washed over their backs as the fire continued to blaze, the only source of light in the dimly lit forest. "Active camouflage?"

"Guess so," the Captain replied, turning his head away as splinters were chipped away from their hiding spot. Robin felt that if they all had weapons, things would be much easier, but nobody asked so he decided not to mention it. "If they didn't know where we were, they know now. We need to retreat before we're surrounded by these…" Chrom trailed off for a moment, and Robin too recalled how the suddenly appearing soldier had shrugged off the electricity in moments. "... things."

And so they went, not knowing where they were going but weaving into the trees all the same.

 **O**

 **I high-key love this story so far. Creative license allows me to do so many things with this AU. If you've got the time, consider leaving a review? I always love to hear about what others think of my writing, be it what I'm doing write or what I'm doing wrong – Vey's the name, and improvement's my aim.**


	6. Chapter 6

**Mission 06**

 **FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION**

When they burst from the trees and into the field, the rain had stopped falling and the sky had turned red, like the world had been encased in ruby. Orange streaks of light flashed through the sky between the clouds, and deep shadows were cast by the swaying blades of grass and barley that stood almost at waist height. Toppled trees decorated this field, showing that it once must have been a part of the forest, and Robin thought he could see movement – shadows – darting from cover to cover, moving stealthily. How many hostiles were nearby? Apparently, a number he had not thought possible until now.

"Come on!" Chrom ordered, throwing his rifle to Frederick while his other hand lingered on the handle of his sword. His fingers flexed and traced the length of the rubber grip, but ultimately he allowed the metal limb to fall back into the pumping in sync with his legs while they sprinted away from the smoldering forest. What had started the fire, Robin may never know. "Don't stop! If they catch us out here, we're good as dead."

Chrom knew how to make people run faster, Robin thought as he gasped for breath but continued to run. He would give the Captain that.

Regardless, he wasn't sure how much further words would be able to carry him before he dropped. Sweat glistened on his forehead in the tangerine light, and his breathing came in ragged and desperate rasps as the purple dusk receded beneath the treetops behind them, stars still glittering in the mysterious veil of the retreating night.

There was a series of cracking that shattered the mesmerizing sight like the fragile peace it was, and dirt leapt up from the ground at their feet in jets, causing Robin to jump in surprise when one almost tore into his ankle. Hot lead pelted into the earth as the amnesiac slid to a stop beside the dead stump of a toppled tree, and splinters of blackened wood and tenebrous woodbits were dislodged from its base by the suppressive fire. He didn't hesitate, stooping down into a crouch and crawling through the dirt and deadened plant life into the rough embrace of the woody safe haven.

While he situated himself, trying to shrink down his form to hide away from the torrent of death, he could see Frederick dragging Chrom into the safety of a nearby ditch out of the corner of his eye, further into the field. Perhaps a road might have once run through the wild field, but if so it had long since been claimed by the rampant vegetation spread and now only dirt and grass remained. The Captain gave a shout of shock as he was pulled down into the ditch, his boot slipping on the rusted culvert at protruded from the earth before he disappeared behind the cover of grass that had grown around the edges entirely.

"This is most unfortunate," he commented, shouting as to be heard over the gunfire. If they were being flanked, they'd probably die. He cast a glance backwards, into the patch of trees that had grown on the edge of the ditch behind his allies, but could see nothing in the darkness cast by the shrubbery and leaves. "I have absolutely zero emotional investment in our adventure, but it pains me to say that I'm running out of ideas, Chrom. The odds of us dying in this field are-"

"Say something positive for once, goddamn it!" Chrom shouted back, crawling up to where Frederick's hard eyes peered at the snow-haired magician through the grass. "Your negativity is starting to get on my nerves, Robin!"

Robin frowned, not particularly hurt by the rather uninspired observation but taking the criticism into consideration all the same. He didn't think his cutting wit was doing anything to make the situation worse, as god forbid anything even had the capability to make their three-ringed shit-show of a scenario any worse, but Chrom's view seemed to sharply contrast with his when examined with an eye for juxtaposition. Perhaps their situation hadn't necessarily been improved in hindsight – but it was his way of dealing with the stress.

However, he pursed his lips all the same for the briefest moment, trying to think of something to say that could perhaps offer some comfort to the distressed Captain. He was certain there must be something to say to improve their relations before they died, no matter how pointless it would be – he did not know why he felt the need to even bother, but something compelled him to try.

And so his lips did purse, but only for a moment.

"I suppose that _when_ we die, we will have what might be considered an above average view," he droned unenthusiastically, risking a glance around the stump. Weapon fire flashed from the forest in bursts of light, and over the trees the dusk was still visible, the line where it met the dawn blurred and theoretically beautiful, warm oranges and cool purples mixing in a swirl of colour. He had never had an eye for these things. "That must count for something."

"Holy hell, I changed my mind," Chrom snapped, looking more distressed than he did before. "Just stop talking for a minute, please!"

"I have nothing more to say," he confessed, retreating behind the stump again as a bullet nearly took his brains on a metaphorical – or rather, come to think of it, quite literal – ride out of his skull.

Robin fell silent after this, finding somewhere in his mind where there was silence and trying to figure out if there might actually be a way to escape from their situation. He didn't know who or what he was yet – this mystery, while rather irrelevant, was nagging at the curiosity he carried with him. This curiosity was already proving to be distracting; it was a flaw that was keeping him from reaching his full potential, and drew his mind back and forth from synthesizing useful solutions to playing around like it was all a game. He needed to focus.

Looking around from his spot behind the tree stump, he couldn't see all that much from his current position. The grass was tall and swayed aimlessly in the wind, each blade turned a dull yellow by the amber light and painting the entire scene in monochromatic blacks and oranges. His attention flickered from there to the moving shadows, and the situation felt even more grim than before as the menacing glow of red eyes peered at them from within the tall grass.

They were watching them – playing with their prey. He didn't know what they were anymore; they clearly weren't human; but the blend of passiveness and aggressiveness that permeated their ranks mildly agitated him. They weren't being taken seriously.

He needed a plan.

"Robin!" Chrom suddenly said, attempting to get up from where he laid prone only for Frederick to drag him back down into the grass. Seemingly with impeccable timing as well, as the Captain's head of blue hair had only just vanished back into the shrubbery before a tightly grouped burst of gunfire slammed into the tree behind him in a series of rapid, hollow _thunk_ s. He tried again, but more carefully, "Robin! Get the hell over here – I have an idea!"

Robin peeked around his stump, and ducked back in just as quickly when the deadly eye of a muzzle flashed brilliantly, nearly taking his head off. He did not like his odds of getting to Chrom unscathed, and felt much safer in his current position. He looked back to Chrom, who was waving him over frantically.

Robin tilted his head, but kept emotion out of his voice and expression as to mask his unease. "I would do that Chrom, but I actually quite like it over here. My pulse is a fascinating thing, and it would be a shame for it to go still before I had the chance to truly appreciate it."

Chrom wringed his hands. "Robin, come with me if you want to live!"

"Perhaps he truly is better off over there, sir," Frederick ventured. "He might be able to distract the enemy long enough for us to fall back."

Robin was once again not really offended by the tactical observation from the bodyguard that had aged in a fashion more akin to perishable foods than fine wine, and might even have applauded the stratagem behind the statement if it wasn't delivered with such a wicked and malicious intent. However, the biting edge to his voice told the amnesiac that just because they had had a moment of kinship on the aircraft, they were still not quite what one might call 'best buds'. Their relations would need more work if they were going to be enjoying the trivial things in life together, like barbeque and the football games. Perhaps, he thought, if he bought the man a watch, they would at least reach something similar to a C support.

"Frederick, do you wear watches?" Robin called out, turning his head away as a shower of splinters exploded from the stump he was hiding behind. The last thing he needed was wooden shrapnel in his eyes. "And if so, which is more expensive? Digital watches, or mechanical watches?"

Robin understood that this was a question of frugality, but as he had mentioned before he still had no information on the whereabouts of his wallet. Frugality was a must.

"I do not wear watches," Frederick said, shooting down the idea.

"Robin, get your ass over here right now!" Chrom shouted.

Robin was about to decline the offer for a suicide pact in the most polite way he knew how when a booming sound brought silence to the field.

 **\\\\\**

Ringing.

Robin's ears were ringing, and that ringing was the only thing he could hear clearly as he cradled his head. The boom had been sudden, washing over the land like cannonfire, and now the muffled din of combat occurring all around him was hazy and distant as he shut his eyes. He could smell things and hear voices – something out there, hunting him. His body was locked up, seized with a panic he had never known before.

That sound. It came again, following the echo like a boy following his mother, their hands locked as she dragged him across the stream. The boy was scared.

And his head hurt so badly.

Suddenly he was being pulled along, dragged like the boy in the river. The grip on his wrist was rough and tough and mean, and he tried to resist its pull with little success.

"Robin, please – you have to listen to me!"

When he opened his eyes, time seemed to have flown by whilst he had slept in his head. Chrom was in front of him, struggling to drag him through the trees with one arm behind him as to tug the amnesiac along by the wrist. When he looked back to Robin, he looked concerned and desperate, and the clump of trees that Robin couldn't remember entering were offering minimal protection from the hail of gunfire that rained down on the woods. It was frankly a miracle that they hadn't yet been shot, and Robin realized that his shoes were digging into the dirt and trampled grass at the heels, gaining traction and actively impeding the Captain's movement.

Where was he? The trees, he guessed, the small and dying tangle that had been behind Chrom and Frederick. How he had gotten here he didn't quite know – he didn't even remember standing up – but the booming was still audible and rhythmic, sounding out periodically. He could now identify it as sniper fire; he hoped this was the cavalry and not another problem.

"Come on," Chrom ordered, giving another hard tug and almost causing Robin to trip over a strategically placed branch. It felt like his arm was being pulled from its socket as they pressed on, and a glance over his shoulder showed Frederick to be guarding their flank, returning fire with his rifle. "Keep going!"

None of this made any sense to the amnesiac, but he stopped digging his heels into the earth and followed the man willingly. The only explanation that he could come to was that he must have had some form of panic attack, but that theory was ridiculous in its own right; he did not get panic attacks. He never had a reason to panic – a good strategist was always in control of the situation.

So why did he feel so lost?

Obviously, it was because he was in the middle of nowhere, with no memory and a bunch of strangers shooting at him. That was a logical conclusion, and he nodded to himself.

Back in control, he mused, pleased.

He didn't want to think about the boy in the stream, and the woman. Any thoughts pertaining to them would be conjecture.

They only stopped running when they had burst out on the other side of the small woody cropping, ultimately arriving in the field that he had previously noted from a distance. Without the patch of trees in his way, he could see almost the entirety of the vast field, and the first thing that stood out in the golden scenery was the dark and dreary facility that rose out of the swaying plant-life like a relic.

The building was relatively small, with only one tower that looked to be the very definition of structural instability, and Robin was truly baffled as to how it was still standing when it was so clearly worn down by time itself. The chain link fencing that ran around the perimeter was eroded and rusted away to the brink of becoming counterintuitive, and it was so clearly desolate and abandoned. Regardless of its state, he quickly identified it as some sort of former military compound – its purpose in the middle of nowhere eluded him, but the relevance of its purpose was the last thing on his mind.

Perhaps they could use it.

Chrom was breathing heavily, and Robin realized that he too was short of breath as they stared out over the field, hunched over and gasping for air. The sound of gunfire was dying off, and now even the boom of sniper fire had stopped, leaving the scene eerily silent and dead – like the land was doomed to fade away. In all honesty, it would most likely fade away one day; only when the land became dead would people know its value.

As for right now, its sole value was as a battleground.

"We should keep moving," Robin said, having completely gathered himself again. The pounding in his head had faded rapidly, and now it was only a distant ache, and then it was gone. He straightened out and took a step in the direction of the compound. "If we make haste, we can use that structure to defend when they come-"

"I want to know what the hell that was first," Chrom said suddenly, cutting him off. Robin paused, looking over his shoulder with a tilted head, and the Captain's eyebrows were knitted together, with his lips set in a grimace. "Are you hurt? Do you need medication?"

Robin didn't need medication. Geniuses didn't need medication. He needed time to sleep, however, and food to eat if he wished to continue operating as best as he could.

"I may be suffering from some side effects of the constant head trauma," he suggested impatiently, tapping his foot. The trousers that he had been issued on the aircraft were now covered in dirt and bark and grime, and he felt moderately fatigued. "But we'll all be suffering much more if-"

"That wasn't head trauma," Chrom rebuked, an edge to his voice. "That looked like a full-blown panic attack."

"If I was having a panic attack, you had no reason to come for me," Robin tried to reason, subtly turning the focus of the conversation to the bit where the Captain had marched down through the hotspot of the fire fight to drag him back. "I have no money to pay you with, Chrom, and no strategic value."

"This isn't a game of chess, Robin," Chrom said, straightening up. His eyes were blazing, and Robin realized that he had misstepped – he now felt small before the man in front of him, and wished he could shrink further under his gaze. "If I'd been in your place, would you have just left me?"

Robin blinked, his unease forgotten. What a stupid suggestion.

"Of course not," he said. "You are the leader."

Chrom's anger seemed to disappear, and he looked down at the snow-haired magician with an almost unreadable expression. He seemed to be disappointed, though what Robin had said to disappoint remained a mystery. From a completely logical standpoint, everything he had said made sense – if one lost the King, they lost the game. Anything else was an asset to be sacrificed, each with different values to be considered.

That was war.

"You're a strange man, Robin," Chrom finally said, sounding almost tired. "And I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. Not yet."

As Chrom began to turn, something caught his eye, and he suddenly lurched in the direction of the amnesiac. Robin flinched at the sudden movement, but was too surprised to do anything more than fall down onto his rear as the Captain raised his metal arm protectively.

There was a muffled thudding sound, and then a ping as a shot from the grass ricocheted off of the man's prosthetic limb in a brilliant shower of sparks. Robin felt his heart leap into his throat, already recognizing that he had been the target, when a flickering shape lunged from the grass like a lion pouncing upon its prey, clawed fingers with wicked sharp carbon points gleaming in the light.

"Get back!" Chrom shouted down to the fallen man, steely digits reaching up and closing around the rubber grip of the sword that protruded over his shoulder.

There was a sharp sound, the sound of metal sliding on metal, and then the blade flashed from its sheath as fast as any bullet. The edge shone wickedly as it sliced through the air, from a draw to a slash in one smooth movement, and Robin thought he could hear a terrified screech come from his attacker before the enemy Spy was cleaved from the air in a splatter of blood.

Chrom sheathed the sword, breathing heavily again, and then he looked back down to Robin.

"I don't care how valuable someone is. If they're an ally or a civilian, I'm going to protect them – with my life, if I have to." Behind him, a PEGASUS was descending down into the field, and a small group of soldiers poured out as the ramp dropped and flattened a patch of grass. "That's how I do things, Robin."

When he began to walk away, Robin watched him go.

Chrom had said Robin was strange, but Robin thought that Chrom was strange. Perhaps, he wondered, they could swap notes.

Maybe he could learn something from the Captain.

Or maybe he'd just get dumber. It was a coin toss.

 **\\\\\**

 **Shorter chapter this time, but this was a good place to end it. No need to make a situation more convoluted and spend a billion words in the first chapter of the game, yeah?**


	7. Chapter 7

**Mission 07**

 **SETTLING IN, AND THE DRAFT**

When he awoke, he felt like a different man. His body still ached, but he didn't feel exhausted. For the first time since he could remember, he actually felt like his body's status was quite acceptable, and all of his needs were met. It was a strange feeling, but not at all unwelcome. When he sat up in his bed, shoving the boring white covers off of his form, he shivered at the sudden chilling breeze that circulated through the room, propelled by the lone ceiling fan that was fixed to the roof.

His sharp umber eyes, no longer bereft of sleep, were cool and calculating as he thought they should be, and they scanned his surroundings thoroughly – from the beds that lined the walls to the single door at the end of the elongated room, he picked apart each detail until he felt like he knew enough about where he was to move again.

The barracks were silent while he climbed out of his bed, clad only in a pair of coarse grey shorts and a white cotton shirt, and his hand immediately went up to feel his temple. The skin there, he found, was uneven and cold – hard and synthetic, suggesting something ran beneath the surface. Neural implants, he guessed, for interfacing with his Tome. That made enough sense – but they did not hum, and only now that all was quiet up there did he notice something absent. They must have been disabled by these Shepherds – that was to be expected, he mused.

Chrom had assured him that he was not a prisoner. In fact, it had been because of Chrom that he had anywhere to sleep at all; the Captain had been generous enough to 'offer' the lost amnesiac residence at the desolate barracks of the Shepherds' main base of operations for the foreseeable future, due to his lack of known family or home to return to. Robin was not fooled by the front, and fully understood that he was still a suspect in the matters that had occurred back in the fields, and what's more the many lives lost at the resort in South Town.

He was not out of the woods yet, so to speak.

He heard various joints pop as he hobbled down the way under the pale light, the ice-cold black tiles quickening his steps while he worked the last kinks of sleep out of his body.

As he moved, he noticed an asymmetry in his weight, and a quick glance down revealed a thin black band of plastic and rubber to have been wrapped around his ankle. The small prick of light fixed to it blinked softly, dim and blue.

He was being tracked.

Either way, he supposed things could have been so much worse. When he had arrived, Robin had fully expected to be treated mercilessly, as a prisoner of war or something of the like. However thus far, he had received nothing short of hospitality, being given a tray of food before being shown to his sleeping quarters for the night. His stomach grumbled as he passed the empty, crumb-covered tray that he had set beside the door the night before.

The air was crisp when he slipped out through the sliding door and into the hallway, the dark tiles following his footsteps like a path of black mirrors, and the light coming from overhead was reflected in the inky surfaces, the illusion broken only by the shadow that glided down the corridor almost soundlessly.

He wandered for a little while, peeking into rooms and searching for anything that might be able to tell him what was to be done with him next – the curiosity was eating away at him, and the desire to know growing stronger by the second as it was wont to do – but there wasn't a soul in sight, and each room was empty and varied in appearances. He found a room filled with sofas and chairs and coffee tables, with several large TVs playing what he guessed to be the news to the nonexistent patrons of the room, and another with long tables and unoccupied chairs suggesting that it was some form of mess hall. Both were empty.

The amnesiac wandered like this for some time, listening for any sounds save for the dull prattle of the TVs in the lounge, but heard nothing.

Just when he was about to give up and return to his room, a voice spoke to him.

" _Hello."_

Robin acted on reflex, ducking away from the loud voice that had spoken almost directly into his ear whilst his hand fell to where his weapon would normally be stowed. When his digits wrapped around nothing but air, he closed his hand into a fist and began running situations through his head while his eyes searched for the owner of the voice. He hadn't heard anyone creeping up on him, and now as he looked he could see no one either.

Seconds ticked by and he remained half-stooped in the middle of the hall, one hand in a fist and the other raised and ready to cast. His neural implants, if they had truly been tampered with, rendered the tool on his wrist nothing more than a paperweight, but hopefully if he was attacked his opponent would not know that.

Slowly, the amnesiac rose back into a standing position because his legs had begun to hurt from the half crouch. More joints popped, and he wondered if he had been hearing things – the doors on either side of the corridor were closed and, as he could attest from experience, locked. The windows on each side of the frame, thin and tall, were frosted and dark as well.

He tilted his head.

" _I'm sorry, did I startle you? It is not often that I meet new people, and I wished to offer a greeting to begin a wholesome and intellectual conversation."_

He twisted on the spot again, as quickly as he could while searching the new direction that the sound had come from. Just as before, there was no one there, but this time he was certain that he had heard what he had heard, and now the knuckles of his fist had begun to turn white. He looked up, searching for cameras or speakers, but failed to locate either – it didn't matter what appeared at a first glance, he knew, when such things could be so easily concealed in this day and age.

Robin had begun to shuffle backwards when a sound came from behind him, and he spun on his heels.

Behind him, or rather in front of him now, a broken cluster of golden light had begun to rise up from the floor, shifting pieces in the likeness of shattered glass orbiting a center of gravity like a small star system that had formed in the center of the hall. He stumbled away, surprised as they grouped and separated, never taking a distinctive shape, but he did not fall down. Rather, the amber glow it cast was reflected in his dark eyes, filling them not only with moderate wonder but an otherworldly light that gave them life none had seen before.

It was unlike anything he had seen before. But… no, he had seen something similar. He couldn't remember, but he must have.

" _Allow me to begin,"_ the voice came from the center of the amber storm, and as the light dimmed Robin realized that each shard seemed to literally be made out of glowing glass – when he stared into one, his own inquisitive orbs stared back from its depths, tinted orange. The shard drifted away, but not before he thought that it had blinked at him. _"What is your name?"_

Almost hypnotized by the sight, Robin stepped towards the mass, and it did not shy away from his approach while his bare feet soundlessly glided across the black tiles.

"My name…?" He blinked, remembering that most things that were beautiful were appealing to the eye as to lure one in, masking the dangers beneath the surface. He stopped moving, and took half a step backwards.

This was...

Robin's eyes, still filled with that glow, scanned the corridor quickly while his brain began to work overtime, picking apart each and every detail of the hallway no matter how insignificant it may have seemed. From the floor to the walls, he only found what he was looking for when he turned his gaze to the ceiling – set into the plain panels, a small glass fixture that was not even the size of his thumb glowed dimly, a tiny light held deep within the dark glass pulsing.

" _Your name. Surely you know your own name?"_ the mass inquired, the shards twisting and speeding up and slowing down in their motions as his voice rose and fell. Yes, he decided, it was a male voice. _"Perhaps if not your name, you may know something else – information regarding your past, mayhaps? I will go first. My name is Laurent; I am eighteen years old, and will have turned nineteen years old within the week."_

The amnesiac, still partially lost, glanced up at the fixture in the ceiling one last time before turning his gaze back to the anomaly before him and folding his arms. The amber glow it cast turned his shirt orange, and shaded his forearms with warm light. He knew what this was now, and that inspired some confidence in him.

It was clever, but they hadn't fooled him.

"... I believe that my name is Robin, but I seem to have no memories regarding the rest of my past," he said, peering into the center of the swirling mass, where a bright pip of light floated absolutely – the center of the universe in front of him, where everything would connect. His voice was nothing but a breath, and a smile threatened to tug at his lips. "And you…" he breathed, fascinated.

He swatted a hand at one of the shards, and the pale digits went straight through the construct, making the shard flicker out of sight for a moment.

"You are an AI."

There was a pause, and every bit of fake-golden-glass in the storm went still, like someone had hit the pause button for the progression of the world around him.

And then it spoke.

" _I am."_

The sound of glass tinkling across the floor – a sound that he had become unfortunately familiar with during recent events – reached his ears as the shards dropped from the air, breaking up when they each hit the ground before flickering out of existence entirely.

When they were all gone, standing before Robin was something resembling a human male, though not quite. Even though it had two arms and two legs and a torso and a head, and even though it stood tall with its arms folded as to mirror Robin, it was not made out of the graceful curves that made up the human body – but rather angles so sharp that they looked like they could cut flesh. It lacked any discernable features as it tilted its head to mimic Robin's own head, until finally the likeness of a pair of golden specs materialized on its face.

" _My name is not Laurent, but rather that it is what I am called for simplicity's sake,"_ he said, the amnesiac's face reflected off of the blank, glassy gold surface that was Laurent's own featureless face. Though he spoke, he had no visible mouth that the magician could discern. _"And you are Robin, a man that Chrom and my mother have been working so hard to learn about. Your eyes – they moved quickly, searching for an explanation, and so they quickly found one. I assume you spotted the projector, despite its small size; very quick thinking and excellent deductive skills. For a human, at any rate."_

The backhanded compliment was delivered in the same cold, even voice that the program had used since it first spoke, and Robin derived no pride or sense of accomplishment from its observation. With its identity as an AI revealed, he now recognized that this being was merely a puppet. This, of course, raised the question; who was the one on the other end of the strings?

Regardless, it had been a clever plan, and if he had indeed been an enemy spy the wonder of the otherworldly sight might have put him off of his guard enough to trick him into revealing that he knew more than he claimed to know. Its only flaw was that he was not an enemy spy, and he did not know anything about his origins.

There was nothing for him to tell.

"Robin!"

Robin turned towards the new voice, and spotted a familiar face skipping down the hall towards him at approximately thirty feet per energetic leap. Her soft olive eyes were filled with a light that had nothing to do with the glowing AI that was behind him, but rather just an unfortunate byproduct of the youthful energy that danced playfully within. Her pigtails bounced as she did, and he wondered if the girl was going to be able to make a full stop before possibly killing him with her momentum.

Surprisingly, despite Robin's doubts Lissa managed to slide to a stop just a few feet shy of what would have most likely been a fatal collision with the amnesiac magician. A smile was plastered across her face, and unlike when he had last seen her she was dressed in a simple skirt and hoodie, having discarded her headphones for a plain headband as well as doing away with her goggles entirely. He found this strange – he thought that most teenagers were fond of combat boots and heavy metal and the like – not such… ordinary clothing.

"Was Laurent bullying you?" she asked after the calamity had been soundly averted, her canvas sneakers appearing to have found some traction on the slick tiles. The second the word bullying left her mouth, he was reminded that before him she was nothing more a child, and could not possibly understand the emotional abuse that the AI might have attempted to put him through had she not shown up when she did. However, beings as he was unscathed, he simply shook his head. "Great! Laurent's known to get a bit suspicious of new people, but I'm glad you two are getting along. Chrom didn't want you to meet him until you got settled."

Robin grimaced at the word settled, wondering how long they intended to keep him here. On one hand, he had nowhere to go after they kicked him out, and he would most likely starve on the street upon his genius going unrecognized by the unwashed masses. On the other hand, these Shepherds might be one of his best bets at learning about his past and possibly recovering his lost memories.

On the magical third hand that most humans were not capable of beginning to comprehend, running with Chrom's strange unit of soldiers was almost guaranteed in running the risk of meeting even more insane and eccentric people that did not understand the meaning of personal space, much like Frederick and this Lissa girl.

It was a win win lose situation, the first of its breed.

"It is certainly… unique."

Lissa frowned as Laurent visibly stiffened. "Laurent doesn't like it when people call him an 'it'. It makes him cranky."

Hm. What an interesting trait for a computer program. Very advanced indeed, he thought.

"I see." Robin did not see, but he supposed he could pretend rather than press the matter and learn about things that did not interest him at the current time. "Very well. Have you seen Chrom? I wish to speak to him about what our next move is."

"Our next move?" Lissa echoed, and he nodded slowly as so that she would understand. So long as she did not forget what he had said, he was confident she would be able to decipher his meaning if he gave her time. "Like, with your memories?"

"And my patience bears fruit," he mused.

" _Chrom and my mother have been working diligently to find information pertaining to you and your past,"_ Laurent assured him, leaning against the wall. His shoulder distorted where it met the panels, becoming unfocused and uncertain in such close proximity to the surface. _"I suspect Mr. Jaegen has also been running his own searches as well, though I cannot confirm it."_

"Of course he is," Robin mused. He blinked, looking at the AI. "Your mother. You've mentioned her before – who is she? I assume you mean your creator."

"You sure do ask a lot of questions," Lissa said, laughing and evidently finding amusement in the man's unending curiosity. He, for the briefest moment, wondered if she was able to fully understand what it truly meant for one to lose all of their memories; if she did understand the concept well, she would presumably realize that his asking questions was a desperate attempt to better understand the world that he had mostly forgotten. All that remained were fundamentals, and thus he had a lot to catch up on. As he watched her continue to giggle a carefree giggle, he decided that she most definitely did not understand the gravity of his condition. "But yeah, he means Miriel. She's the resident bookworm and the head of the Shepherds' research and development team." She pursed her lips. "I guess she's actually the only member of the R&D team."

"You are a very poor army," Robin noted. He had suspected to some extent, but it seemed that he didn't know the half of it. "Very very poor. How sad."

"How about instead of me telling you about them, you meet the Shepherds yourself?" Lissa suddenly suggested, and she didn't wait for an answer before grabbing his arm and tugging him along. He cast a glance towards Laurent, but the holographic representation of the AI had already vanished into thin air. "You're gonna love them! Come on!"

He sincerely doubted that statement.

"My personal space, Lissa – it is one of my dearest treasures," he said as she dragged him along. "Please release me. Lissa."

 **\\\\\**

Robin had braced himself for a perilous journey, but was pleasantly surprised to find that the only thing standing between him and the Shepherds was not actually as much walking as he had thought it would be. The only thing that made the trip distressing was the energetic gremlin of a human being that forced him to move as if they were running from a pack of wolves, or what's more a pack of zombies riding wolves. For a moment, he wondered if a pack of zombies was indeed called a pack, but he was quick to write it off as irrelevant to him as a person due to the stunning lack of zombies in his life; zombies were fictional, after all.

When Lissa entered the room, he followed shortly after her due to the firm and oddly strong death-grip that she had on his wrist. He felt somewhat less like a human being and more like a dog brought to show and tell as she dragged him along, but he was far too much of a victim of circumstance to be embarrassed by said circumstances.

After what felt like forever but logically couldn't have been more than ten minutes of madly sprinting through the labyrinth that the Shepherds allegedly resided in, the pair came to a stop in front of a desk that was constructed mostly out of glass, with plastics supporting the fragile sheets. The room was lit only by the sunlight that poured through the wall behind the desk, which seemed to have been removed and replaced with a long window that would allow a sniper to pick off anyone that resided within the room.

The few pieces of furniture that decorated the rather bare floor were occupied by various posteriors of all genders and ages, while others were standing in front of Chrom's desk, and one lone individual was peering out the window almost longingly, seemingly being completely ignored by the others and excluded from the conversation like some sort of social outcast.

Robin tried not to look at him, for fear of catching whatever terrible disease the man might have had that caused him to be rejected by the rest of his unit.

"The hell do you mean we're not doing nothing?!"

It was far too late to try and escape from the room, as now several pairs of eyes had been drawn away from the current subject of argument and were paying him a moderate amount of attention. If he attempted to flee, they might react unpredictably – with that, he tried to stand as still as possible as to not provoke them.

"I mean we aren't doing anything," Chrom said, sounding tired as he massaged the bridge of his nose with his flesh digits. His prosthetic digits were tapping anxiously on the surface of the desk, and Robin could see the scratches in the glass from where the metal limb must have usually rested caught in the light. "Scouts weren't able to find anything when they checked it out, and the survivors from the resort told us exactly what we already know – masked terrorists attacked for seemingly no reason."

"Fuck," the woman with the red hair and the bad attitude spat on the carpet that had been laid over the tiles in front of Chrom's desk, and Robin mentally made a note not to step in that particular spot any time in the near future. "They killed entire fucking families before they hit the resort, chrome-head! I'm not gonna sit around and let 'em get away with that shit!"

"I know, I know. They won't, Sully, I promise."

Robin thought that standing perfectly still had been going rather well for him until the woman's eyes turned on him, and he quickly changed his mind; he suddenly felt like prey that had been sighted by a fearsome predator, and due to the fact that physical strength was not his forte he quickly tried to talk the woman down and defuse the situation. However, when he opened his mouth, he closed it just as quickly to prevent something that might further enrage her from coming out. Talking, he remembered, was most certainly not his forte either.

Her nostrils flared and she took a step towards him, her button up perhaps a little too unbuttoned revealing several faint scars on her neck. She had seen her share of combat, he recognized; if it came to a fight, he wasn't sure if they would be on equal footing.

"Sully, back off will ya?" a man who inexplicably was lacking in upper body clothing jeered from the side, his heavy boots kicked up on the coffee table as he lounged on the sofa beside a man with greenish-brown hair. Robin's gaze lingered on the greenish-brown hair for a moment, equally disgusted and curious as to what could produce such a strange hair color, before he realized that this was his chance to escape the woman's wrath and he scuttled to the side. "Poor kid just walked through the door and you're already lookin' like you're about to kick the shit outta him."

"Yeah? And am I wrong?" Sully looked around for a moment before finally her eyes settled back on Robin, who had thought that he was blending in beside the lamp rather well until it became apparent that he wasn't. She pointed to him with a finger, and he wondered what the point was when he was clearly the new subject of discussion/argument. "We don't even know where the hell he came from, and we're letting him sleep in our goddamn base without a guard. He obviously ain't a civilian – shouldn't we be treating him with a bit more suspicion than a fucking collar and a pat on the back for not dying?"

Robin had not received a pat on the back for not dying. He wished for this to be made apparent, but not did not seem like a stellar time to clarify when the woman was so clearly on a roll. He did not wish to throw her off.

"Robin was of great assistance in killing off the last of the mercenaries," Chrom interjected, his fingers stopping their rhythmic tapping on the desk suddenly as he looked back up at them. It seemed that he had been arguing with the red-headed woman for some time now, as he looked like he had reached the point where he simply wished that a meteor would crash into the building and kill them all. "If it wasn't for him, things might not have gone so smoothly-"

"Oh shit, he killed some mercenaries?" Her eyebrows arched at him before she turned back to Chrom. "Best just give him full blown fuckin' membership to the Shepherds then, yeah?"

Chrom winced, but said nothing.

The side chatter of the room stopped and soon the floor was silent as the Captain refused to meet her gaze, and as Sully looked around a most unpleasant look overtook her features entirely. She looked over to Robin, who waved uncertainly at her, before looking back to Chrom with a face that, while Robin could not see it personally, was most likely quite comedic.

"... No fuckin' way-"

"Emmeryn suggested it, alright?" Chrom raised his hands as it to calm her down, but she seemed too stunned to say anything as he hurriedly explained the situation to her. Robin got the feeling no amount of explanation could ever repair the rift that had just formed between him and the Captain; friends did not draft other friends into their military. He was almost certain of this, and he felt somewhat betrayed while at the same time admiring the man's initiative. "I haven't decided yet, but he could be useful-"

"Like hell he could be useful – he could slit our fucking throats while we're sleeping!" Sully tried to flip Chrom's desk, but Chrom shot out of his seat and weighed down on it with his upper body. Frederick, who Robin hadn't even noticed was standing beside Chrom's desk until he moved to intercept Sully, seemed to think twice about trying to stop the raging soldier. "You lost your goddamn mind?!"

After a couple seconds of struggle between the redhead and the Captain, Sully let out an angry huff and stepped away from the desk. She shot one last glare at Chrom before storming away with her arms in the air. "How the fuck have we not been decommissioned, I'll never fucking know. Whatever – do whatever the hell you'd like! I don't care!"

Chrom watched her go, sweat running down his face. Robin guessed holding the desk down must have been much harder than it looked, and he wondered how strong the woman actually was. Such information could be both useful in a dangerous situation and for his own personal safety. She seemed like a loose cannon.

"Guess what?!" he called after her, sounding like a child trying to have the last word in an argument. Robin found himself asking the same question that the woman had asked mere moments ago, and realized that it would likely keep him up at night. "Robin's a Shepherd now, and you can't do anything about it because I'm the Captain!"

Sully either didn't hear him or didn't care, and soon the room was left awkwardly silent in the echo of the door slamming shut behind her.

Robin was about to say something – even he wasn't sure what was going to come out of his mouth – and perhaps it was a good thing that he was cut off as the glass door that Sully had slammed seconds before suddenly shattered.

"Shit," Chrom grunted, massaging his temple. He looked around. "Right. So that's the verdict – until further notice, we aren't taking action. Any questions?"

"Don't I get a say in this?" Robin asked with a raised hand, coming to stand in front of the desk. It was quickly dawning on him that he had just been drafted, and he wasn't sure that he was pleased with the decision that had been made. "I would very much like a say in this."

"Excellent question." Chrom frowned, looking at the amnesiac with a thoughtful expression and a quizzically cocked eyebrow. "If you don't join the Shepherds, Emmeryn has also suggested that you are sent to a federal prison in the middle of the ocean without trial until it is confirmed that you are not affiliated with the organization that attacked the South Town resort two days ago. You will, if I'm being completely and brutally honest, probably never see the sun again. Next question?"

Robin cocked his head, considering his options. Could they truly send him to prison without a fair trial? He did not wish to find out, and to be honest, it sounded fair enough.

He lowered his hand. "That was my only question," he confessed.

"Excellent. Lissa will show you to your new office after Miriel reactivates your neural augments, and then someone will get you some new clothes." Chrom rubbed his eyes, and Robin wondered if the man had gotten any sleep. "You start today."

"What about pay?" he asked.

"What about pay?"

Robin realized that Chrom had answered.

 **\\\\\**

Robin literally had nothing to move into his new office.

"Here it is!" Lissa cheered, as though the possibility that they would never reach his office had been a legitimate concern at a time. He did not share her enthusiasm when he stepped into the room, his eyes surveying the small office that he had been so generously granted by Chrom. He supposed it was certainly better than federal prison in the middle of the ocean, but he was having trouble counting his blessings when there was a small girl breathing down his neck and shouting things cheerfully.

"Here it is," he agreed, nodding slowly as he looked over his shoulder. She was watching him expectantly, waiting to trail after him like some sort of infant canine, and he frowned. He could not think whilst she was stuck to the seat of his pants like a melted chocolate bar that he had been unfortunate enough to sit on, thus staining his pants brown and raising questions as to his bowel control.

The more he thought about it, the more he enjoyed making this rather juvenile comparison. Regardless, whilst a chocolate bar could be dislodged from one's rear, it was beginning to seem as though Lissa could not, and he could feel a headache coming on.

Ever since they had left Chrom's office, she had continued to buzz with her distressingly naive peppiness like a fly buzzes in one's ear, telling random stories that while most would be entertained by he was most certainly not. It was getting to the point where he wondered if she had outlived her entertainment value or if her entertainment value had been a miscarriage, and he simply found that he wanted the talking to stop.

He just needed to find a way to end the conversation and see her off before he could properly examine his new office for undesirable things, such as leaky faucets or radiation leaks in the closet. He peered over his shoulder at her thoughtfully.

"Robin?" She sounded confused as she looked up at him, tilting her head. "Are you gonna step in, or…?"

"Goodbye," he said, stepping in and shutting the door behind him after finding that he could not come up with a clever way to end her chatter.

The thump of fists pounding on the door reached his ears, and he could see the blurry tips of her pigtails occasionally bounce up through the frosted glass of the window.

He supposed that was clever enough.

Turning his attention to his new office, he stepped down from the ledge and slowly circled the large round table that sat in the center of the room like a centerpiece, though a very dust-covered centerpiece that suggested the owner had died long ago and was no longer around to clean the room.

When he ran his hand across the surface, a holographic display appeared above the table, showing one of what he assumed to be his predecessor's unfinished battle plans. It displayed small 3D markers that he assumed to have been soldiers, and he realized that it wasn't small team tactics – whoever had been last working at this table appeared to have been planning for troop movements in a full-scale war.

Soon, as he continued to scroll from plan to plan, each showing an even grimmer representation of the armies clashing and entire cities and platoons being ravaged and wiped from the map entirely, he began to wonder who the table had once belonged to.

"Perhaps you were playing war?" Robin mused out loud, watching as what Robin thought must have been an entire enemy city was invaded and assaulted by tiny, almost endearing versions of full sized tanks. The number over the city began to plummet quickly as the allied troops moved through, from millions to thousands to hundreds and then to question marks as buildings fell. "Or perhaps I have shoes to fill."

The light flickered, the program encountering an error as the cities and soldiers all sank into the surface and the orange glow turned blood red.

He was left in silence, the large window that light poured in through being the only thing to bring movement to the room as the dark shadows crawled out from the dusted furniture.

He guessed he was home.

 **\\\\\**


	8. Chapter 8

**Mission 08**

 **THE WORLD AS WE KNOW IT**

 **\\\\.**

A handful of days that Robin failed to count passed in the blink of an eye, each one more forgettable than the last as he worked his way through his new kitten-themed Calendar at a steady pace. That time was mostly spent working on learning the layout of the city and updating the old map – the map that the previous owner of the table had failed to maintain as Ylisstol developed and he grew old. Who said person was, Robin had as of yet failed to identify—primarily due to a lack of detailed records on this 'Old War'.

From what he could gather, however, he hadn't been all that bad of a strategist. Robin even gave grudging approval to some of the man's strategies, whilst others simply awed him entirely.

Not bad at all, he thought to himself as he scrolled through the numerous scenarios.

Originally, the new Tactician had intended to attempt to learn about his past using the new resources that had been made available to him with his newfound position and power. However his curiosity had waned in the face of a sea of aliases—thousands of names that were not his—and it had not been long at all before he gave into despair entirely and shut down the console to turn his attention to more practical ventures.

His office—for a lack of better words to describe it—was akin to an infant version of Chrom's office. The black leather sofa tucked away in the far corner of the room was draped in blankets, as he hadn't felt the desire to spend another night in the cold and uninviting barracks. The coffee table in front of it was covered in papers and notes and empty mugs of coffee, and the tv that was mounted from the ceiling was playing the news constantly while he worked, albeit with the volume turned off.

The news was not at all significant to him – he simply found that it made him feel more professional to have it on than to not.

From the chair that he had dragged around his desk to get a better view of the projection table, he examined his work thoughtfully. The dark room was only made darker by the deep shadows cast by the amber constructs on the table, and his face was bathed in a warm glow that made his eyes twinkle. Each building—none coming to stand larger than a few inches tall—had been moved or manipulated by him at some point or another, and now it bore more resemblance to the vast, sprawling metropolis that he could see out the window, and looked less like a relic of the past.

He supposed that this was acceptable for now.

"So this is what you've been working on, huh?" Chrom mused, sounding significantly less stressed out than he had at the meeting a couple of days prior. The light from the table mixed with the cerulean in his irises, turning the blue within a murky black. A smile had appeared on his features, and he looked more like the Chrom that Robin had been coming to know. "Your first move as our new master tactician."

Robin had not intended for the Captain to judge his work, but it seemed that the man had access to every room in the facility; something he supposed made sense when one truly thought about it. The Tactician had kept his door locked as much as possible to prevent external distractions from interfering with his work, but every lock had a key, and Chrom had every key.

"Who owned this table before I did, Chrom?" Robin asked, folding his arms while the man leaned in for a closer look at the miniature buildings. Once upon a time, men before him had used tables with paper maps and eventually plastic models of the battlefield. He found this to be much more efficient. "And what sort of war was it that they fought in? The battle plans that remained on this device were… interesting."

Chrom winced, and Robin thought that the man might have bit his tongue. "I don't know who owned the table before you. My father kept the identity of his Generals a secret, and I found this in one of his old warehouses while doing a bit of spring cleaning. As for the war it details… well, that's a story for another time."

The Captain clapped his hands together, and on the far end of the room the wide window panels became transparent once more, the opaque black wall dissolving and allowing the afternoon light to pour into the room. The tv's volume returned with its latest story, while the man stepped carefully over and around the various stacks of papers that Robin had printed out for both the new map and unrelated future projects.

Almost immediately, Robin flinched and covered his eyes in an attempt to shield his precious seeing holes from the beams of sunlight that he had forsaken almost a full day prior. Something akin to a hiss escaped from between his lips.

"You sure made this a place you can call home fast," Chrom said as he lifted another stack of papers, scanning the contents with little interest. Robin hoped that the man did not read too deeply, as many of the papers were detailed records on each of the Shepherds that he was to work with. Some containing what might be considered intimate information, even. He was no social guru, but he had little doubt some of the information would raise eyebrows, to say the least. "How the hell do you find anything in this mess?"

Robin was somewhat offended by the description that the man used for his personal and intricate filing system, but supposed that he could not fault a lesser mind for being incapable of reading between the lines. It took true genius to recognize that everything was already in its place, despite facetious appearances.

"I manage," he said. "There is a system, whether you can see it or not. It is a natural espionage deterrent."

"It's a natural people deterrent."

Robin would have begged to differ—after all, if it had been a people deterrent, he would have already been looking into the various other practical applications of his filing system—but decided that there must have been a more important reason for the Captain's visit that extended beyond questioning his new strategist's methods.

While he was already coming to realize that the people around him were incredibly likely to bother him with absolutely menial inquiries and their own unimportant troubles, he doubted Chrom would ask him why water is wet when acts of terrible terror were being performed all over the globe by a mysterious organization with an unclear agenda.

"Anyways, I'm guessing you're wondering why I'm visiting you? I already figured that you wouldn't appreciate social calls," Chrom said, voicing Robin's own thoughts as he folded his arms and leaned against the projection table. A relatively tall building in the eastern end of Ylisstol was knocked down by his elbow in the process, but Robin did not comment on the man's destructive actions.

"A sagely observation," he said instead.

"... I'm going to be honest with you Robin," Chrom breathed, glancing to the Tactician before turning his eyes to the window. Beyond the glass, the tall buildings of Ylisstol stood on either side of the road like pillars holding up the sky, and light reflected brilliantly off of the crystalline walls that encased the sturdy frames of numerous office complexes and other facilities. Distantly, Pegasi drifted through the sky and danced daringly between brilliant holographic signs; it almost looked like nothing was wrong in the world from there, he thought. "The Shepherds don't see much use. They haven't for quite a while – I made them to help people, and that… hasn't gone the way I had hoped it would."

Robin was unsure if he was supposed to be surprised or shocked by the revelation, but he was most definitely not. As he had mentioned before, the Shepherds were proving to be possibly the most dysfunctional military unit he had ever the misfortune to work with, and he was certain that if he had his memories, the word 'possibly' would not even be in that statement.

He had no personal experiences with most of the Shepherds as of yet, but just by skimming their files had he learned that most of the members were quirky and immature, and none had enough qualities of an ideal soldier to be turned into a reliable asset. Every file that he read had only further convinced him that these people were insane, and that they were going to get him killed in an incredibly painful fashion.

"I cannot imagine why," Robin droned.

"I don't know either," Chrom said, evidently missing the lack of genuine or even non-genuine disbelief in the Tactician's voice. He looked down at his feet before looking back to Robin, his features softer than they had ever been before. "I never seem to do the right thing. I've made mistakes. I've tried to help who I can and tried to make a difference, and in the end I've never seen it matter. No one knows us – as far as people are concerned, we're just a PMC."

"The illusion of heroism is so often dispelled by the whims of reality," Robin said, shrugging slightly as he glanced down to the toppled building. Holographic plumes of smoke rose from where the rubble had scattered through alleyways and streets, as well as from the crushed buildings that it had landed on. The number over the city dropped to account for the estimated casualties that might have occurred should such a catastrophic event have happened in real life. He frowned, a bitter taste in his mouth. The idealism invoked an iota of sympathy from him, but he spoke his thoughts anyways. "... Logic dictates that heroes are idiots."

Chrom winced, but did not visibly appear to anger while his dark eyes studied Robin's face. They seemed to be searching for something, though Robin could not guess what, before dropping to examine the destruction that his own elbow had caused.

"I'm sorry you feel that way, Robin. I really am," he finally said. "Maybe you just need to see what I've seen to understand why I don't feel the same way – and on the other hand, hell, maybe you're right." He snorted, looking away from the map. "But I don't give a shit either way. This is who I am."

Above anything else, the Captain's reaction pleasantly surprised Robin. He hadn't said what he had said in an attempt to get a rise out of Chrom, but when the words had passed through his lips he had been fully aware that the man would most likely get angry. Instead, his more professional side was showing now, and for a moment the odds of the Shepherds failing decreased significantly as their leader showed a stronger side.

This was the man that Robin now worked for. Such a strange person.

Robin climbed out of his chair slowly, the loud popping of joints suggesting he had been sitting and staring at his project for much longer than he had originally thought. Carefully and with the steady hands more befitting that of a surgeon than a mere military strategist, he reached over and gently stood the remains of the toppled building back up.

The bits of metal and rubber that he had fixed to the pads of his fingers hummed softly as the old micro-technology within interfaced with the controls of the table. The rubble stuck to his fingers like candy, and everything slotted back together easily as if time were playing backwards. The smoke disappeared and the numbers climbed again, and soon the block was as good as new.

He tugged the segmented finger-sheaths off of his hands and set them on the corner of the projection table before snapping his fingers, and the city disappeared.

"I am not the Captain. I am merely the reason – a means. If your goal is the preservation of life above all else, then it is my goal as well, no matter what my doubts may be. I will guide us as well as I can to our destination, and plot the courses, but ultimately you will decide how we get there and where we go. What is it that you came to tell me? My time is rather valuable."

Chrom sighed, uncrossed his arms and stopped leaning on the table. "We'll talk more about what you just said later. The point is that now is our chance to make a difference – and I need you to have my back. Me and Emm have been trying to come up with a sound plan to stop these attacks before they can cause any more damage – there's been approximately twenty more sightings of those armed terrorists from the field over the course of the last five days, and without knowing where they'll attack next we can't properly defend against such fire power. What's more is that they aren't just here – they're all over the world. Valm, Ferox, Plegia – even past Valm, extending into the more distant lands of Stinjast."

"That cannot be possible." His voice was cold and his reply snappy. Robin had studied the map of the world the second he got the chance, and unsurprisingly it had been entirely unfamiliar to him. The only land he somewhat recognized was the one known as Plegia, and even then it had been more like déjà vu than anything else. For these soldiers to be in so many places at once, they would need a number that would be incredibly difficult to hide. "An organization of that size could not simply just appear out of nowhere. We must know something about where they may have come from."

"Yeah, I thought the same thing. But no dice – we don't have anything on these guys. Their cybernetic enhancements are mostly unmarked along with the rest of their equipment, and autopsy reports have some pretty interesting things to say about the soldiers themselves." Chrom looked uneasy as he went on, "These men aren't like anything science can produce at its current state. They shouldn't even be alive, Robin – their blood is so deprived of oxygen that it's not even red anymore, and their heartbeats are so slow that their organs only function due to the tech that some sick fuck shoved into them."

"Have any of them been taken alive?"

"... Yes, I suppose you could say that, depending on your definition of alive."

Chrom reached into the pocket of his shirt and pulled out a folded slip of paper. After several turns in his hand, it had tripled in size, and he laid the sheets out on the table. Robin was unfazed, but they clearly made Chrom uncomfortable.

"Remember what Marth said back in the forest? About how they're so far gone they're just killing machines? Well, he wasn't wrong. They won't say anything meaningful, and their pain threshold is so high they're almost numb to it. They're really monsters…

"The plan me and Emm settled on was the best we could come up with, and I wanted to run it by you first since you're our new strategist and all. See your thoughts.

"I don't know when yet, but soon the Shepherds will be mobilized and sent to Regna Ferox. We're gonna personally meet with the ruling Khan of Ferox in an attempt to earn his support for our new project. If he provides soldiers and some funding, we can set up a defense network across the country designed to quickly respond to these terrorists and stop their attacks before they happen. It will only buy us time, I know, but something needs to be done about the loss of life.

"If we distribute our troops well, we can cover all major settlements in both Ferox and Ylisse, which will be the first part of the project we have dubbed First Encounter Thirteen, or FE 13. From there, we'll be sailing around Valm and move to seek support from the Stirian government, and repeat what we'll do with Ferox to cover more ground. The preservation of life is the main goal, and this should also strengthen ties with the nations we ally with.

"After Stirinast, we'll move on to offer nine other nearby countries to join forces. The final result will be thirteen nations united against the threat – if nothing else, it will protect innocents. If we're lucky, we'll scare whoever's controlling the troop movements of these terrorists. Normally, I wouldn't resort to such extreme measures so quickly; these circumstances are anything but normal, however. Bodies and burning buildings are piling up faster now than they did in the Old War."

Robin nodded at first, but held up a hand. He reached down with his other hand, tapping at the control panel for the table, and a map of the world appeared before him. Ylisse, he could see, was tucked between three other countries; Ferox was above them, while Valm was to the east, and finally Plegia to the west. Past Valm, a large chunk of the map had been labeled Stirinast. Numerous other countries laid adjacent to the black and red spots on the map, and he frowned.

"I don't understand. What of Valm and Plegia? Do we not wish to seek their aid as well, when they are so close? It could work in our favor, to have such powerful allies nearby."

Chrom's jaw was set as he reached down with his prosthetic, metallic digits interfacing with the table and enlarging the country of Valm. Robin wondered if he should cut his arm off to manipulate the table with such little hassle as the Captain did, but realized he rather liked his arm, and would prefer to keep it as it was.

"Valm isn't in any condition to help us right now. Before these terror attacks started happening, it was already teetering on the brink of a civil war. Too many warlords on one island, if you ask me. Now it's no longer on the fence, and the entire country is in chaos. They've got their own problems." He cast the holographic representation of Valm aside and pulled digital Plegia from its spot on the map, like he was taking apart a jigsaw puzzle. "As for Plegia… well, they've already made it clear that they don't want anything to do with us. They'll try and figure it out on their own, and they might due to how militaristic they are."

"The war plans," Robin remembered, "they involved Plegia and Ylisse."

"That's right." Chrom didn't sound happy. "Plegia doesn't want anything to do with us, and you can thank my father for that. Or you could, if he wasn't already dead. He was out of his mind and attacked them for no reason – an insane asshole, if you want my thoughts on it. I'll tell you more about it later if you want, since I've already said too much to leave you in the dark about it – 'sides, it's not like it's a big secret or anything."

Robin filed the information away in his head for future reference. Plegia and Ylisse were not friends.

"... Anyways, that's the plan." Chrom stretched and stood up straight, and Robin closed the map to leave the table dark and cold once more. The conversation had ended on a rather awkward note, and there was obviously some discomfort in the man's movements as he avoided looking at Robin, evidently finding something out the window quite interesting. "Your thoughts?"

"As you said, it's a temporary solution. However, as far as temporary solutions go, I'm unsure if I could think of a better plan myself." Lie. Partially a lie, rather. He was not so modest. "There is a limit to how much action we can take against such a fluid threat," Robin said, nodding and feeling satisfied with the decision. This Emmeryn woman must have had a heavy hand in the details, as he wasn't so certain that Chrom could think of something like this alone. "I approve."

"Great!" Chrom clapped his hands together one last time, though nothing in the room changed and it was simply to show that their conversation was over. Robin was quite glad, as he had many preparations to make – much information to gather on this Ferox place. Chrom turned to leave, before stopping suddenly. "Oh – and Robin?"

"Hm?"

"Make sure to pack warm clothes, alright? You're gonna need 'em. Drop by the Quartermaster some time – she'll get you stocked." Chrom grinned slightly. "And if you catch her in a good mood, she might even give you a discount."

Fantastic. He loved getting discounts on his own standard issue equipment.

 **\\\\\**

Corporal Stahl Reiter had spent most of his morning with his nose buried quite firmly in the company fridge; while this wasn't entirely unusual with Stahl being who he was, it was at this time that he'd actually been doing his best to keep his head down until Frederick stopped lurking about like he was the Grim Reaper himself, come to collect. Reiter had always found the older soldier unnerving, and the guy had been even more on edge ever since Chrom had brought Robin onto the team.

So of course, when Stahl rolled out of bed late for work, he knew that there would be all but literal hell to pay if his superior were to get his hands on him.

It was a well known fact amongst the Shepherds that First Lieutenant Frederick Jaegen was all but notorious for his lectures and various other assorted punishments, after all. While Stahl himself knew that Frederick was a good man deep down, he also knew that the man was anything but tender; in fact, he reminded Stahl a lot of his old Drill Sergeant from back in training, albeit without the leather switch and constantly booming voice. Or the baldness. Or the incredibly bushy moustache – which for some odd reason Stahl had always considered to be of particular note whenever he found himself describing the man.

Beyond Stahl himself, the man's moustache had actually earned the Drill Sergeant quite the reputation amongst his prized class of 'worthless boot-licking sacks of shit'. Go figure.

Alas, he was getting off topic.

He resisted the urge to run a sheepish hand through his olive locks as he circled his sparring partner with wary footing, careful not to misstep. Her crimson eyes were locked with his verdant orbs and his face glistened with beads of sweat, and he was painfully aware of her borderline-sadistic grin as she flexed her fingers, heedless of leaving herself open to him; he wasn't stupid enough to make his move yet, as she'd caught him with a knee to the gut more times than he could count for falling for that same trick. She was very good with her legs – and her fists. And her elbows. Causing pain in general, Stahl supposed as he idly wiped a trickle of blood from the corner of his mouth with his thumb.

Sully Haussier smirked after him as he barely got clear of a wicked kick that she sent lashing towards the side of his head; he only just got his hands up in time to block the lunging knee that followed, and her fists rained a blunt barrage upon his forearms – that was gonna bruise, he knew as he retreated under the force of her attacks.

Closing his eyes for a moment, Reiter inhaled a fresh breath of air. He rubbed his sore jaw, and could feel stitches forming as his lunch battled him. Knowing the pain would only get worse, he shook his head to clear his mind before swooping towards her; the soldier slipped past her punch with a short-changed sort of pivot, and swung for her midsection.

When she grabbed his arm, he knew he'd made a mistake.

The world flipped and his stomach was suddenly in his throat as up became down and down became up, and after what felt like an eternity off the floor he had finally completed his revolution over her knee, landing hard on the soft-ish mat below with impact that forced the air from his lungs.

"Ouch," he offered from the mat, breathing heavily and nursing his stomach as he resisted the urge to curl up. The shock that had raced through his entire being left more than his rear end aching, and he was on the verge of writhing in pain.

Sully didn't hesitate to reach down and lock elbows with him, before hauling him to his feet with a heaving grunt. She patted him on the shoulder, breathing heavily; she had broken a sweat, and that was all Stahl needed to know that he was at the very least improving. She'd told him he had a ways to go numerous times—especially in terms of his attitude towards combat in general—but even a completely average guy like him could improve. That was pretty great, in his opinion.

"You're gettin' better," she told him with a huff, "fought like a bloody beast this time. Still a bit too slow on the offensive, though – we'll work on that when I stomp you again in a few days, alright?"

He chuckled weakly. "Right… is it time to break for lunch yet?"

She laughed. "If you're buyin'."

 **\\\\\**

 **THE MIRACULOUS RETURN**

 **xd**

 **For real, it took a while. I've been working on Chapter 9 for like, a long time. I wrote out a lot of stuff, then scrapped it, then wrote out a lot of stuff, and then, uh, scrapped that too. Then I unscrapped the- it was a mess, and here we are! It's been almost a year tho, oops**

 **I've put a ton of thought into each last name (minus Lowell and Jaegen, but pls understand), so I hope it's not too off-putting. I figured it was kinda necessary to include proper last names, and hope they're at least fairly fitting.**

 **Anyways, while I'm reluctant to say much about how the story will go in this Cyberpunk (I finally learned a proper genre classification for this, thanks Deus Ex!), I'd like to note that this story is exclusively Awakening with some nods to other Fire Emblem iterations.**

 **Maybe if I get around to playing Fates, I'll be writing a Fates one in like, the year 20xx**

 **Ciao!**


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